Carolina Gomes
António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, has asked for peace and calm, especially during the public protests that are generally increasing across Libya over power cuts and failure to hold elections. The poor economic conditions and the rise of oil and bread prices are also valid complaints.
With a loss of more than $3.5b from closures and a drop in gas output, Libya’s National Oil Corporation created a huge effect on the national power grid. In addition, the energy sector has also fallen into the hands of political divisions, which resulted in a wave of forced closures of oil facilities since April.
After a year of relative public calm, the Libyan population seems to have run out of patience. Protests have taken place in streets all around the country, especially in Tobruk, Benghazi and Tripoli, in the latter thousands screamed “we want lights to work” over and over.
Although the Libyan factions in Geneva, summoned by UN special adviser Stephanie Williams, made some progress last week, there wasn’t an agreement on a constitution for the national elections.
“The people’s right to peacefully protest should be respected and protected, but riots and acts of vandalism such as the storming of the House of Representative’s headquarters late yesterday in Tobruk are totally unacceptable,” Williams posted on Twitter on Saturday.
Last Friday night, the day after the failed Genova agreement, angry protesters broke into the parliament in Tobruk in an outburst from the humiliating living conditions that the population has been put under and the deteriorating political expression.
A statement by Guterres’s office states that “the secretary-general is following with concern the demonstrations that were held in several cities in Libya”.
In an attempt to ask for peaceful protests, the UN Secretary called on the public “to avoid acts of violence and on the security forces to exercise utmost restraint”.
The European Union envoy in Libya, Jose Sabadell, also called on protesters to “avoid any type of violence” and that these protests demonstrate that the citizens want “change through elections and their voices should be heard”.
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Carolina Gomes – Final year student of BA Journalism and Criminology at the University of Essex. Although my interests are very broad, subjects regarding human rights and all its specifics catch my attention.
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Libya protests planned over power cuts, political deadlock
Libyans angered by rising prices, chronic power cuts and political deadlock planned further demonstrations Monday after a night of angry protests across the capital.
Masked youths set alight car tyres and blocked roads including a major coastal highway between central Tripoli and its western suburbs, but security forces did not intervene.
Videos carried by local media also showed demonstrations in Beni Walid and the port city of Misrata.
A youth movement calling itself “Beltress” said further protests were planned in Tripoli’s Martyr’s Square at 4:00PM local time (14:00 GMT).
The movement demands elections and the dissolution of both the country’s rival governments and their two houses of parliament.
Public anger has been fuelled by power cuts that often last 18 hours amid soaring summer temperatures, despite Libya sitting on Africa’s largest oil reserves.
The vast country has been mired in political unrest and armed violence since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed Muammar Qadhafi.
On Friday night, protesters stormed the seat of the House of Representatives in the eastern city of Tobruk, ransacking its offices and torching part of the building.
In both Tripoli and the main eastern city of Benghazi, the cradle of the 2011 uprising, thousands took to the streets to chants of “We want the lights to work”.
Some brandished the green flags of the former Qadhafi regime.
‘Kleptocracy and corruption’
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for calm, but UN-mediated talks in Geneva last week aimed at breaking the stalemate between rival Libyan institutions failed to resolve key differences.
Presidential and parliamentary elections, originally set for last December, were meant to cap a UN-led peace process following the end of the last major round of violence in 2020.
But voting never took place due to several contentious candidacies and deep disagreements over the polls’ legal basis between the rival power centres in east and west.
The crisis deepened this year as parliament, elected in 2014 and backed by eastern strongman Khalifa Haftar, appointed a new government to replace that of interim leader Abdelhamid Dbeibah.
He has refused to cede power except to an elected administration.
On top of the political deadlock, Libyans’ living standards have been hit hard by price hikes on food imports due to the war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile supporters of the rival administration of former interior minister Fathi Bashagha have shut down several oil facilities since April as leverage in his power struggle with Dbeibah.
Libya expert Jalel Harchaoui told AFP that “kleptocracy and systematic corruption” were rife in both eastern and western Libya.
For normal Libyans however, the year “has been extremely painful” because the country “imports almost all its food and the Ukraine war has hit consumer prices”, Harchaoui said.
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Libya’s Dbeibah admits misjudging crisis, tries to defuse tension
Despite their country sitting on Africa’s largest oil reserves, Libyans regularly experience 18-hour power cuts.
Libya’s Tripoli-based government sought on Monday to quell public anger over chronic power cuts, devoting its weekly meeting to the electricity sector and admitting it had underestimated the problem.
The meeting followed a night of angry protests across the capital, where masked youths set car tyres alight and blocked roads.
A further demonstration had been planned for Monday afternoon to demand long-awaited elections, but organisers cancelled it, saying they did not want to be associated with possible acts of vandalism.
Despite their country sitting on Africa’s largest oil reserves, Libyans regularly experience 18-hour power cuts, fuelling public anger that has piled pressure on both the Tripoli-based government of Abdelhamid Dbeibah and an eastern-based rival administration.
On Friday night, protesters stormed the seat of the House of Representatives, based in the eastern city of Tobruk, ransacking its offices and torching part of the building.
In both Tripoli and the main eastern city of Benghazi, the cradle of the 2011 uprising, thousands took to the streets to chants of “we want the lights to work”.
Some brandished the green flags of the regime of deposed ruler Muammar Gadhafi, who was killed in a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that plunged the country into over a decade of violence and wrangling among what is now a deeply-divided political elite.
“Nobody can deny the right of the people to go out and protest and to demand elections,” Dbeibah told his cabinet on Monday.
The government “didn’t take the electricity crisis seriously”, he said, adding that resolving it would take longer than expected.
He announced however that three power stations were to open in July, two in the west and one in the east.
Planning minister Mohamed Zaidani said some $2.96 billion had been spent on the electricity sector since 2013.
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