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By Libya Herald staff.
Tunis, 13 March 2016:
The Presidency Council has claimed that its proposed 13-ministry government has effectively been given the . . .[restrict]go-ahead by the endorsement signed by some hundred members of the House of Representatives (HoR) last month and by the Libya Dialogue in its statement on Thursday.
As a result, it said yesterday, all the country’s sovereign institutions must now deal with it alone as the legitimate administration. So too must the international community and international organisations.
The Presidency Council’s claim, however, contradicts what was said by members of the Libya Dialogue in their declaration on Thursday. It fell short of appointing the government on the basis of the 100-HoR member statement. While recognising the latter’s validity, it still called on the HoR to formally endorse the government. It also told the Council to go to Tripoli and prepare for the government’s arrival.
Privately, though, a number of Dialogue members added that if the HoR did not quickly approve the government, the legal requirement for it to do so in the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) would be rescinded.
In the meantime, however, yesterday’s Presidency announcement is now being contested by a number of members of the Libya Dialogue who did not turn up to Thursday’s meeting. Ten in all, they include former ambassador to Rome Abdulhafed Gaddur who represents Mahmud Jebril’s National Forces Alliance, Mohamed Darrat of the National Front and Jamal Ashour of Abdulhakim Belhaj’s Nation Party.
They said that the announcement went against the LPA and was a wrong interpretation of what the Dialogue members had said. It was for the HoR alone to vote on the government, they insisted. The fact that it had not till now done so, they added, indicated underlying problems with the government’s composition and the LPA itself.
