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By Sami Zaptia.
London, 19 June 2016:
The House of Representatives (HoR) has called upon all members to attend the informal discussion sessions planned for tomorrow and Tuesday. The meetings are planned to start at 1 pm.
This latest move by the HoR to organize a meeting, all be it an informal one, comes on the back of its failure to convene in official session in Tobruk for the second consecutive day last Tuesday. It had failed to gather a quorum. HoR president Ageela Salah and his two deputies were reported to have been present.
Those members that had turn up for the intended session, numbered between 50 to 70, held an unofficial social gathering after breaking their post-sunset Ramadan fast at Tobruk HoR member Salheen Abdelnabi’s home. They also went on to hold further consultative meetings on Wednesday.
At these informal gatherings, it was reported that there was an effort to narrow the gap between the two opposing sides present.
The HoR was called upon last week to meet in order to vote-in the Faiez Serraj Government of National Accord (GNA) and to vote on a constitutional amendment to the 2011 Transitional Constitutional Declaration (TCD), Libya’s current political roadmap and social contract.
However, like the many previous attempts, the HoR failed to gather a quorum with those in opposition to the GNA voting with their feet by failing to turn up in order to prevent the required quorum to make decisions binding.
It will be recalled that the opposing parties in Libya’s conflict signed the UN-brokered Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) in Morocco back in December 2015. The HoR has voted-in the LPA in principle, but has rejected the make-up of the GNA as well as article 8 of the LPA which would remove Khalifa Hafter as effective head of the Libyan National Army.
HoR members in opposition to voting-in the GNA also oppose the empowerment of Tripoli militias as the instrument enabling the Serraj GNA in the capital. They insist on the formation of a non-militia/tribal/regional based army that would be loyal to a legitimate central government.
