By Ashraf Abdul-Wahab.
Tripoli 7 September, 2013:
In a scathing attack on its performance in office, the Grand Mufti has demanded that the . . .[restrict]government of Ali Zeidan be sacked. Calling it incompetent, he said it had lost its right to remain its office. He is the latest to do so in a mounting campaign against it.
“The government’s failure to fulfill even the minimum requirements for its existence in power deprive it of its right to remain in office”, Sheikh Sadik Al-Ghariani said in a statement published last night. “It has no right to remain, ignoring its own incompetence, and wait until calamity befalls the country! History is unforgiving ? and the retribution of God is inescapable!”, his statement read.
Congress had to remove it – and quickly. It was not right, he said, that Zeidan could be appointed prime minister by a majority vote but removed only by a two-thirds vote.
The first duty of a government was to provide security for people and protection for them and their property, the Grand Mufti said. It had to be able to defend the country’s sovereignty and its resources. It had failed to do so.
Listing other duties of government, including law and order, upholding the public’s rights, transparency appointing properly qualified people to posts and clamping down on corruption, he said that it had betrayed the trust placed in it. It had sided with particular groups and parties, which he did not name, for sake of remaining in office.
He accused it of making empty promises. It had said that its patience with criminals was running out. “When will the government’s patience run out, I wonder!” he said. “The country’s wealth has been seized by force for an entire month if not longer, and we see criminals and outlaws numbers are in the increase since the government took up office!”
No government member could absolve himself from responsibility at these critical times, “The government members are equally responsible for what is happening,” he said. “No excuse shall be excepted.” He added: “For the government to remain in office with its inability to end the killing and oppression is, in itself, oppression and wrong.”
Using a football analogy, he accused the government of trying to gain extra time for play.
“Playing in extra time costs the country every day, every hour, vast sums of money, loss of life, loss of property, obliteration of institutions, the ruin of youth, theft, the loss of integrity, the undermining of sovereignty, and more – such as the path to the extreme chaos and lawlessness. Is this, I wonder, the latest road map that has been drawn up for Libya after all bloodshed and sacrifice of lives the country had offered!”
Calling time on the government, he insisted that Congress had to act “without delay” to ensure Libya’s stability and secure its oil wealth [/restrict]
