By Libya Herald staff.
Benghazi, 2 August 2014:
The Libya Herald has been informed that today’s meeting of the House of Representatives in . . .[restrict]Tobruk has been delayed until Monday to enable all members to attend.
Most members are now in Tobruk but not all, including the eight representatives from Misrata and former Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur. He was elected in Suq Al-Juma and as the General List candidate who won the most votes was widely expected to be nominated for the position of House President. The decision to delay the meeting, this newspaper has been told, was specifically to enable him to join the others in Tobruk and to ensure that the House is as inclusive as possible by having all members there.
The decision to meet on Monday means that the plan by the President of the General National Congress, Nuri Abu Sahmain, to hold a formal handover session in Tripoli at which the House would be commissioned by Congress is now dead in the water. Congress may or may not meet in a last formal session but it is now history.
The new House has, however, invited Abu Sahmain to join it in Tobruk on Monday for what will be, instead of a preliminary meeting as suggested earlier, its inaugural session at which it will elect a president, vice presidents and rapporteur.
The first session will be chaired by the oldest member Abubakr Bahira, the former spokesman for the Cyrenaica federalists who was elected as one of Benghazi’s 20 representatives. The man who topped the General List in city, Younis Fanoush, is seen as another possible President of the House. [/restrict]
