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Monday 29 August 2011

Libya: What the New Administration Must Fix Urgently

The new, still nascent, Libyan leadership faces a dual, difficult legacy which it will need to overcome. Four decades of autocratic regime that failed to build genuine state institutions and six months of civil war has brought the attendant and inevitable human and material losses.

By George Okore

TRIPOLI---With the imminent ouster of Gaddafi regime aided by the people with strong support of NATO, Libyans face pivotal moment of historic proportions.

The new, still nascent, Libyan leadership faces a dual, difficult legacy which it will need to overcome. Four decades of autocratic regime that failed to build genuine state institutions and six months of civil war has brought the attendant and inevitable human and material losses.

The challenge for that leadership, as well as for international actors who enabled its drive into Tripoli is   to establish a broadly inclusive and representative transitional governing body. The new administration will also need to address immediate security risks and find an appropriate balance between the search for accountability and justice and, on the other, the imperative of avoiding arbitrary score-settling and revenge.

As rebel fighters stream into Tripoli, they will come upon the collapse of a quasi-state, the Jamahiriya, created by Muammar Qaddafi that, however sincere it might have been at its revolutionary inception, became a vehicle to advance his personal and political ambitions. It is this twin challenge – replacing an autocratic regime and rebuilding a new state from the ground up – that will be so daunting for the new leadership.

Further complicating this task are the inevitable difficulties in establishing the national legitimacy of Libya’s new leaders. The Transitional National Council (TNC), created in rebel-held Benghazi in March 2011, could stake a clear claim to representing Libyans in areas free of regime control, and it has done a remarkable job in constituting basic institutions to manage civic life in those areas and attract international support.

 Yet  TNC never could claim to represent all Libyans, even if it broadly reflected their aspirations, for the simple reason that most Libyans, especially in the capital Tripoli, were not in a position to freely voice their opinions or participate openly in the TNC, whose membership was therefore weighted, by default, toward those in liberated zones. The TNC will now have to reflect in its membership all of Libya in its full diversity, and merge its administrative operations with those of the remaining, functioning public sector institutions.

The new Libya’s rulers will need to urgently get political legitimacy by involving representatives from all parts of the country and all strands of society. Indeed, TNC should strive to be fully inclusive, embracing qualified former-regime elements who were not direct perpetrators of human rights abuses, lest their exclusion create the conditions for a future insurgency of the kind that blighted post-2003 Iraq. The

TNC should strive to be transparent in its actions and, along with local leaders and rebel groups, should communicate its decisions clearly. Particularly important to Libyans is transparency in contracts and provision of services. The expanded council should continue to make clear it is a strictly provisional body charged with managing day-to-day affairs. Its focus should be on providing law and order and ensuring proper delivery and functioning of essential services until elections can be held.

On security, law and order, the new team needs to fill the security vacuum left by surrender or disappearance of the former regime’s security forces. They should stop distributing arms to the population and instead begin collecting and securing them. They should integrate whatever viable elements of the former regime’s security forces can be retained into a new structure led by commanders appointed and supervised by the interim ruling council.

They should also seek transitional justice and reconciliation and hold to account those who committed major crimes, while allowing others to clear their record or obtain pardon on condition they provided full disclosure of their participation in the regime.

The administration must also invite a National Convention involving all tribes and groups to agree to a new constitution within 12 months .Libya needs a modern and fundamental law protecting freedom and a balanced division of power soon. A referendum should follow and only thereafter free elections for the parliament in September 2012. Elections, when held too early, are no good as the people must first get know the new faces, parties and directions.

It should also collect the stolen national fortune of the Gaddafi clan. The frozen money on Western bank accounts must be released within the next two months. The process of those large money transfers must be made transparent to avoid corruption cases.

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