By Libya Herald reporters.
Misrata/Tunis, 5 May 2017:
Municipal council staff in Misrata have issued a statement of support for the city’s embattled mayor Mohamed Eshtewi. It following Wednesday night’s incident when militants broke into a meeting in the city’s Housing Foundation offices and forced him to sign a letter of resignation. The staff have called for the militants to be prosecuted. While everyone had the right to protest, protests had to be peaceful and had to respect the law.
They also demanded that a court order to remove the wall built in front of the main entrance to the council offices be implemented.
The vast bulk of local people support Eshtewi, political observers in the city say. The meeting too between Presidency Council head Faiez Serraj and Libyan National Army leader Khalifa Hafter has been widely welcomed, they say. “Only ten percent don’t want it,” claimed one local official. It was the same people who opposed Eshtewi, he added.
Despite the call for legal action against the protestors, it is thought that the standoff will continue. Having managed to close the council offices, the militants are now said to be in no mood for compromise. On the contrary, the Hafter-Serraj meeting is said to have made them even more determined that ever.
For his part, Eshtewi has rescinded his resignation on the basis that it was done under duress.
