By Libya Herald reporters.
Tunis, 9 March 2017:
Plans to relaunch the House of Representatives (HoR) and move it away from Tobruk, which got underway on Tuesday evening in Tripoli with a meeting of 40 members, are to continue with a second gathering in the capital this Sunday. At least 70 members expected to attend, according to one of the organisers, Misrata HoR member Mohamed Al-Raied.
In addition to Tuesday’s 40 members, another 30 had been expected to turn up, he told the Libya Herald, but they were unable to make it to Tripoli because the flight from Tobruk was cancelled.
The aim of the meetings, he explained, was to pressurise Ageela Saleh into holding sessions beyond Tobruk and take a more collaborative attitude towards members.
If too many MPs opposed to the HoR president and his policies turned up to a session, Raied said, Saleh would prevent it from taking place. Two weeks ago, he claimed, 130 members had turned up and the president immediately went home to Guba, ignoring them.
Many members from the west and south of the country had tried to get Saleh to change his approach, he added. But it was not only they who were unhappy at the way the HoR was being run. Nineteen of the 70 members expected to turn up for Sunday gathering at Tripoli’s Bab Al-Bahr hotel were from places such as Marj, Brega, Ras Lanuf and Ajdabiya, Raied said. Also expected was Benghazi member Jalal Al-Shweidi.
The meeting would, Raeid explained, be an informal gathering of members to look at how they could move forward. Whilst some wanted it to be an official session, most believed this could happen only when there were at least 100 of them in attandence.
However, once 100 or more members had joined the group in Tripoli, they would declare their meeting to be an official session of the HoR.
Raeid expected that to happen in a couple of weeks’ time.
As to the Presidency Council, he insisted that it had not had anything to do with the plan to meet in Tripoli. However, it was happy with the idea, he said. It wanted the HoR “to undo the mistakes done in Tobruk,” he stated.
The development of what looks likely to become a parallel HoR coincides with the House’s decision two days ago to suspend its involvement in the national dialogue process and reject Faiez Serraj and the eight others named as members of the PC.
With only 36 voting in favour and a reported turnout of 56, the decision has been condemned as illegal by some members.
