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By Libya Herald staff.
Tripoli, 24 August 2014:
The Supreme Court has deferred making a decision on the legitimacy of the House of Representatives . . .[restrict](HoR). Its 13 members, who are now based in the relative security and impartiality of Beida, are reported to have felt that they were not ready to assess the matter because the appellants had not completed all the documentation required for the case. The court had been reported as planning to make a decision today.
Mistrata’s members of the new House had asked it to rule on the legitimacy of the HoR’s sessions after it unilaterally inaugurated itself on 4 August in Tobruk. The former President of the General National Congress, Nuri Abu Sahmain, also associated himself with the appeal and indicated that he would abide by the court’s ruling although, given his decision yesterday to reconvene the former Congress, that is now in question.
The argument put forward by the Misratan and a handful of other HoR members, along with Abu Sahmain and pro-Islamist members of the former Congress, is that because it did not take part in an inaugural session in Tripoli organised by Congress, at which power was to be handed over, it is not yet legally up and running and, therefore, its decisions are null and void.
Almost the entire international community, including the UN, the African Union, the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the EU, view this a minor technicality and have said that the HoR is Libya’s only legitimate, democratically-elected legislature. In their view, Congress is no more. Just last week, Turkey firmly repeated that view. [/restrict]
