The preliminary results, characterized by independent monitors and party
representatives who witnessed the vote count for a new national
assembly, reflect in part the well-known name and tribal connections of
the coalition’s founder, Mahmoud Jibril.
He is the former interim prime minister who helped lead the de facto
rebel government in Benghazi, and he is also a member of Libya’s most
populous tribe, the Warfalla.
The apparent success of Mr. Jibril’s party over the Muslim Brotherhood’s
bloc makes him perhaps the most important voice in the next stage of
Libya’s transition, though he is barred for now from elected office.
In a campaign that took place over just two weeks, after a 40-year
stretch in which Colonel Qaddafi crushed any dissent or even political
organizing, the ideological lines for Libyan voters remained fuzzy, at
best. Many voters acknowledged plans to let tribal, family or community
ties guide their vote.
The Islamists, in contrast, sought to portray Mr. Jibril’s coalition as
“liberal” or “secular” — and some who stood with him acknowledged
privately that for them those terms were apt.
Still, unlike opponents of Islamists in other Arab countries, Mr. Jibril
never hurled accusations of extremism against those who called for the
application of Islamic law. Like the other major factions here,
including the Islamist parties, Mr. Jibril pledged to make Islamic law a
main source of legislation, though not the only one.
He and his allies publicly echoed a frequent refrain of Libyan voters
who were unsure what to make of re-emergent groups like the Muslim
Brotherhood: “Do they think they are more Muslim than we are?”
A political scientist who earned his doctoral degree at the University
of Pittsburgh and taught there as well, Mr. Jibril said in a recent
interview on Libyan television that friends and neighbors anywhere he
has lived would describe him as someone who “goes to the mosque for
Friday prayers, and we see that he prays.”
“The Libyan people don’t need either liberalism or secularism, or
pretenses in the name of Islam, because Islam, this great religion,
cannot be used for political purposes,” he said. “Islam is much bigger
than that.”
“Jibril is praying five times a day and fasting, so what is the
difference?” asked Suleiman Zoubi, a former judge and political
independent in the eastern city of Benghazi who appeared set to win a
seat in the congress. Ali Tarhouni, the leader of a fledgling party in
Mr. Jibril’s coalition and another former minister in the transitional
government, called the results evidence of Libyans’ “moderate”
character. But he also attributed their success to familiarity. “People
trust us,” he said. “Coming out of a war, with a political vacuum and a
security vacuum, people were looking for those they knew were tested in
the tough times.”
Official results will not be released for several days. The votes were
counted Saturday night in each polling center in the presence of party
and candidate representatives, as well as independent observers. Both
Islamists and their opponents said Sunday that Mr. Jibril’s coalition
was headed for at least a plurality of the planned congress. It is
expected to govern Libya for 18 months and possibly oversee the writing
of a constitution.
Some leading Islamists had predicted as recently as a few days ago that
their parties would win as much as 60 percent of the seats. But on
Sunday, Hisham Kreskshi, a leader of the party founded by Libya’s Muslim
Brotherhood, said it now expected to win less than a quarter of the 200
seats.
He said the Brotherhood’s party was not disappointed by its own results,
but it was unhappy with the dominance of Mr. Jibril’s coalition. “We
were disappointed that there was nobody else but him and us,
disappointed with the other parties we might have had a coalition with.”
A loosely Islamic party, one founded by Abdel Hakim Belhaj, a former
leader of an armed insurgency here who became the head of Tripoli’s
military council, also fell short in the voting, attracting even less
support than the Brotherhood’s bloc.
Although Mr. Jibril’s previous interim role barred him from running for
the planned national congress, his name appeared larger than that of his
party or its candidates on campaign posters. In interviews in several
parts of the country in recent days, a plurality of voters volunteered
that they planned to vote for Mr. Jibril, even though his name was not
on any ballot.
Mr. Jibril’s tribe, the Warfalla, includes perhaps a million of Libya’s
roughly 6 million citizens. The tribe’s homeland is in the western city
of Bani Walid, but there are large numbers of its members in the major
cities of Tripoli and Benghazi as well.
His victory would complete a comeback for a leader who was pushed from
office under pressure from rebels after the capture and killing of
Colonel Qaddafi. They said Mr. Jibril spent too much time in Western
capitals and neglected domestic needs in rebel-controlled territory.
But Mr. Jibril pivoted out at a propitious time. Celebrated during the
fighting as the embryo of a new Libya, the self-appointed Transitional
National Council lost much of its popularity after the fall of Colonel
Qaddafi. The council failed to control the squabbling militias that took
over the country, and at times bowed to their demands for top posts or
other patronage.
Among Mr. Jibril’s most vocal opponents were the militia leaders from
Misurata who emerged as a powerful force in the interim government
because of their aggression in the fight against Colonel Qaddafi. The
Misurata tribe has a rivalry going back generations with Mr. Jibril’s
Warfalla tribe, who killed a hero from Misurata during the pre-World War II fighting against the Italian occupation of Libya.
No one expects the vote to end such resentments. Reports from Misurata
on Sunday indicated that it was one of the few major cities to reject
Mr. Jibril’s party. Instead, early results indicated that the city had
favored a party founded by Abdurrahman Sewehli, a descendant of that
slain hero.
Of 200 seats in the planned national assembly, about 80 will be
allocated to a competition between the party lists, mainly in the major
cities. The other 120 seats will be decided by races between individual
candidates.
But the Islamists conceded Sunday that they did not expect to dominate
those seats, either. Repressed with exceptional cruelty by Colonel
Qaddafi, Libya’s Islamists never developed the preaching and charitable
networks that gave them a leg up over liberals in Tunisia or Egypt, to
say nothing of the political expertise.
As recently as a few weeks ago, Muslim Brotherhood fliers introduced the
organization on the streets of Darnah with the slogan, “You have heard
of us — now hear from us!”
But at the same time that he demonized Islamists, Colonel Qaddafi
muddied their identity as an opposition force by incorporating Islamic
ideas and imagery into his own mythmaking. He banned alcohol and
legalized polygamy, declaring Libya to be already in some senses an Islamic state.
Tellingly, Islamists lost out even in Darnah, an eastern city that is
considered their stronghold, said Abdel Hakim el-Hasadi, a former
Islamist fighter who is now a leading politician there. But he said Mr.
Jibril had called him two days before the vote to seek his support, and
they now planned to meet in the capital.
“If we take Jibril at his word, this is 100 percent good,” Mr. Hasadi said.
No comments:
Post a Comment