The Fathi Bashagha Government of National Stability (GNS), selected by the House of Representatives (HoR), announced yesterday that it has resumed its work from the city of Sirte. It will use the Ouagadougou Hall Complex as its headquarters.
The large Qaddafi-era complex was made famous recently for being the headquarters of the 5+5 Joint Military Commission.
Commenting on the start of his government’s work from Sirte, Bashagha said “We have a national duty to the Libyan people, and it is not in the interest of our national project to postpone the government’s work. Therefore, we decided to conduct our business from the city of Sirte”.
“The rest of the members of my government and I will make sure to travel throughout the country to communicate directly with citizens, to closely monitor the bottlenecks that municipalities are experiencing, and take all steps to consolidate the principle of decentralization,” he concluded.
Libya has two competing governments and Prime Ministers
It will be recalled that while the eastern headquartered Libyan parliament, the HoR, selected Fathi Bashagha as Libya’s new Prime Minister this March, Bashagha has since failed to take over the reins of power in Tripoli from the incumbent Caretaker Prime Minister, Abd Alhamid Aldabaiba.
Aldabaiba does not recognize the legality of the HoR process that selected Bashagha and refuses to hand over power. He is physically preventing Bashagha from entering the capital and centre of Libyan power, Tripoli.
Bashagha did manage to finally sneak into Tripoli on 17 May but was militarily forced out by pro-Aldabaiba militias.
Hence the Bashagha government remains an ineffective government with no budget and no influence in western Libya, and more importantly Libya’s real centre of power, Tripoli. So far, it is a government that is on paper only.
