Milad Elharathi
In the main time, there is need to draft a national road map to transform these concepts to tangible practical plans that can be implemented according to the available budget. Accordingly, all concerned ministers put down their proposals concerning these resources.
Each proposal has objectives for the program and its component, and a definition of the strategy to achieve these objectives, with a timetable and explanation of the obstacles that each program may face and how to overcome them.
It is important to devise a system for accountability to give warning indications monitoring the stages of implementation and development priorities that will offer benefits to all citizens.
The Major Development Priorities
Good governance: and improving responses and accountability as well as the services that are provided by the government or the institutions, besides the local governments bodies.
– Participation and social integration, which leads to the individuals and societies’ ability to participate in the decisions that affect their lives.
– Health: improving the quality of health care and access to the services that aim at promoting the health of those who are physically, mentally and socially marginalized.
– Education: quality of education that improves the ability of formal and informal educational institutions to provide educational opportunities that contribute in alleviating
poverty, and giving priority to provide job opportunities, alleviate poverty, decrease cost of living, and combating corruption.
– The Judiciary’s Independence: Independence of the Libyan Judiciary system means that the Judicial Power should be isolated from any other powers of the government. That means that courts should not be subjugated to any influence of any institution, body or council in the state or any persons or parties.
There are several means to realize that, including selection of the judges and their appointment for life so as to enable them to concentrate on establishing justice and to judge in all cases according to the rules of the law, and according to what their conscience dictates, even if their judgments were not popularly accepted, or did not serve interests of certain groups or persons.
However, national development priorities differ from Libya to another state, but Libya should be confined, as a whole, to abolishing unemployment, providing job opportunities, alleviating poverty, reducing living costs, combating corruption, availability of food, combating crime and violence, combating narcotics, treating political instability, providing daily services such as drinking water, electricity in terms of securitization approaches, health care for all family members, endorsing equal rights between men and women, speech freedom in press, radio and television, and in seminars and conferences.
Furthermore, establishing security and acceleration of economic development is one of the priorities in rebuilding Libya after the revolution, and building a safe and stable society where the people own the country’s wealth.
As a result, it is necessary to aim all classes of the society with fixed programs by providing real job opportunities that maximize the role of human resources in upgrading productivity and good quality to be able to export the surplus of products.
It is vital to convince members of the society by the Media and seminars that development is done for their own interests and that will be asserted by asking every individual to play a role in that development, and to equally benefit of its results.
No doubt, putting citizens’ basic needs at the top of the national development priorities, broader popular participation in decision-making process, exposing economic, social and cultural policies to more studies through open public debates will lead to the best use of human resources, and make access to data and information, provide transparency in economic transactions, limelight all aspects of flaws and inefficiency in governmental departments and economic institutions and combat of corruption.
All these should be done in a framework of democracy. Development process is not only affected by democracy but it also affects it. Democracy avails the framework that constitutes an intensive development.
Economic growth, which includes a high degree of industrialization and value added, contributes in transformation to democracy much more than selling or exporting raw material.
Returns of raw oil sales do not per se lead to that transformation in the required speed and depth. Oil returns are accumulated by the state, and consequently increase the state’s power and bureaucracy as happens in some oil producing and exporting states. Politically oriented, Libya, in the first election, after half a century to elect the members of the General National Conference (GNC), the results of the Libyan election was in contrast to the expectations of most analysts who betted on the Islamists’ victory as happened in both Egypt and Libya, as the general trend of the Arab Spring was in favor of the Islamists.
In contrast, the Libyan results came to rectify the political comps and correct the course of the whole Arab revolts, and proved that the Islamists were not the only ones in the ground.
These elections returned confidence of followers of the democratic civil state, stressing that not Libyans are in favor of the Islamic rule. They are looking forward to a prosperous future for the modern Libya state: the state of institutions, a democratic constitution, a rule of the law, justice, rationality and living in peace with themselves and the world, as a state of stability, construction and development.
To conclude, Libya’s agony is not caused so much by the civil war, as it is by the internal problems left unresolved by Muammar Kaddafi. The war simply revealed a series of weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which had remained more or less dormant for decades.
And it’s almost impossible to solve these problems anytime soon, especially since the House of representatives does not have too many human and financial resources, so we can expect a weak, divided and on the edge-of-survival Libyan state for many years to come.
In short, Libya will be the most predisposed to internal divisions and instability. At the same time it’s also the only North African state to have failed to do away with the ethnic and tribal barriers and to create a national identity.
The main barrier to achieving this goal has been and still is geography and wealth along with the tribal segmentations in the country.
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Milad Elharathi – Visiting Fellow, at Clare College, University of Cambridge UK
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