By Libya Herald staff.
Tripoli, 27 August 2015:
Abdulrauf Beitelmal was elected as Central Tripoli’s new mayor today, replacing Mahdi Al-Harati sacked . . .[restrict]by fellow municipal councillors at the beginning of last week.
Just five of the nine councillors, the minimum number required to elect a mayor in a nine-seat council such as Central Tripoli, took part in today’s vote. It had been ordered by the Tripoli-based local government ministry yesterday despite Harati obtaining a court order blocking a fresh election. The ministry said that order was not legally valid in the case.
The five were Beitelmal himself as well as Taher Al-Krewi, Abdulrahman Ghalali, Mohamed Banon and Ibrahim Khalifi.
Mohamed Abu Janah who had voted along with them last Tuesday to dismiss Harati did not turn up, nor did Ibrahim Aribi, Fatma Baghi or Harati himself.
He was sacked amid allegations of incompetence and of regularly being out of the country when the city was suffering from power cuts, bread shortages, petrol queues.
It is thought that Harati will continue to challenge his removal and now today’s election.
Beitelmal, an engineer by training, is said to be a moderate. It is unlikely, however, that he will have much greater success than Harati in dealing with Central Tripoli’s many problems because little money has been made available to it.
He is reported to have good relations with other Libyan mayors, acting as coordinator for the working group of Libyan municipalities set up following the meeting in Brussels in March which was part of the Libyan Dialogue process. [/restrict]
