Libya on edge before first election

6 Jul 2012, 11:44 pm   -   Source: AAP

Libya is on edge as the country goes to the polls on Saturday in the first election in the country in four decades.

Calls for a boycott and other unrest on the eve of Libya's first vote since the overthrow of longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi have raised fears of election violence, even as campaigning came to an end for a contest seen as a milestone on the country's rocky path toward democracy.

The Saturday election of a 200-member transitional parliament caps a messy nine-month transition after a ruinous 2011 civil war that ended in October with the death of Gaddafi, whose four-decade rule left the country deeply divided along regional, tribal and ideological lines.

The parliament will elect a new transitional government to replace the one appointed by the National Transitional Council (NTC) that led the rebel side during the eight-month war and held power in its aftermath.

Many in Libya's oil-rich east feel slighted by the NTC-issued election laws, purportedly based on population, that allocate their region less than a third of the parliamentary seats, with the rest going to the western region that includes Tripoli and the sparsely-settled desert south.

In what it called an attempt to defuse east-west tensions, the NTC decreed on Thursday that the new parliament will not be responsible for naming the panel that will draft a new constitution. Instead, the drafters will be directly elected by the public in a separate vote at a later date.

But this has not satisfied some in the east, who press for a boycott.

"We don't want Tripoli to rule all of Libya," said Fadallah Haroun, a former rebel commander in the east's regional capital Benghazi.

Earlier this week, ex-rebel fighters and other angry protesters in Benghazi and in the nearby town of Ajdabiya attacked elections offices, setting fire to ballot papers and other voting materials.

Haroun said boycott supporters would take to the streets on election day to "prevent people from voting, because this is a vote that serves those who stole the revolution from us". He said they would not take up arms but when asked how they would stop voters, he said, "We will see tomorrow."

Many in the west are equally dissatisfied with the decree, saying it will undercut the authority of the new parliament.

"The National Transitional Council acts like a rooster with its head cut off," said Yassar al-Bashti, a candidate with the liberal Free Libyans Party. "They want to weaken the new parliament after their failures over the past months."

The vote also will be a test of the strength of Islamist parties, which have gained influence in Libya and other nations following the ouster of authoritarian regimes run by strongmen like Gaddafi and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. Groups vying for power range from the politically savvy Muslim Brotherhood to the ultraconservative Salafis and former jihadists.

Late on Thursday, just before a 24-hour pre-vote ban on campaigning went into effect, supporters of the Justice and Construction party co-founded by the Muslim Brotherhood marched through the streets of Tripoli carrying the party's flags. The Alliance of National Forces, led by secular-leaning former premier Mahmoud Jibril, paraded in cars plastered with party posters. The National Front, which descends from a Gaddafi-era opposition movement, lit the sky over the capital with fireworks.

A day earlier, the former rebel commander and former jihadist Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, who co-founded the Homeland or Al-Watan party, spoke to hundreds of supporters at the heart of Tripoli, endorsing democracy that will serve Islamic Shariah law.

Those four parties are seen as frontrunners in this highly unpredictable race.

Libyan observers however say that voters are likely to cast ballots based on personalities whom they know, rather than ideology.

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