Eight months after Col. Moammar Khadafy was killed in his native city of Sirte, Libyans head to the polls in an election designed to close more than 40 years of despotic rule.
The July 7 voting will be the first election in Libya’s history, and expectations are high.
For weeks, people lined up to register; more than 80 percent of those eligible have done so. Nationwide, more than 4,000 candidates, representing 41 political parties or running as independents, will compete.
The election is for a 200-seat Constituent Assembly that is to name a prime minister and a council of ministers to replace the current interim government. The assembly will also set up a commission to write a new constitution.
The aim is a straight transition from despotism to a pluralist democratic system within 18 months.
For four decades, Khadafy pretended that Libyans were unanimous in support of the weird ideology depicted in his “Green Book.” Were he alive today, the colonel would be shocked by the variety of ideologies (some as bizarre as his) competing in an open market of ideas.
Libyans will choose from among conservative, liberal, socialist, Islamist and monarchist party lists seeking a share of the 80 seats reserved for them. Another 120 seats will go to individual candidates competing on a constituency basis.
This hybrid system, partly inspired by Iraq’s successful electoral experience, is designed to achieve as wide a representation as possible. Electing the entire assembly via party lists (“proportional representation”) would have given the bigger cities, notably Tripoli and Benghazi, an unfair advantage. But filling it with seat-by-seat contests, US style, could have produced a big majority for the better organized and financed parties, notably the Muslim Brotherhood, excluding many new and as-yet fragile political groups.
The mixed system is expected to produce an assembly in which no single bloc holds an overall majority — making the imposition of any particular ideology that much more difficult.
Special efforts have been made to ensure the widest possible representation for women. Party lists must allocate half the candidate slots to females. But women are still unlikely to end up with more than 10 to 15 percent of the seats. It’s just that hard to find women candidates outside the larger cities.
In the recent municipal elections in Benghazi, the country’s No. 2 urban center, a woman topped the polls in a turnout of over 70 percent. In other cities, most parties haven’t found women to put on their lists.
Exciting though it is, the election is an exercise fraught with risks. It could highlight and solidify Libya’s ethnic and tribal divisions.
In the east, the Muslim Brotherhood will be in fierce competition with traditional Sufi movements on one side and radical Salafi groups on the other.
The Libyan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood is campaigning on a platform inspired by “the Turkish model.” Presenting itself under the label of the Justice and Development Party, a name borrowed from Turkey’s governing party, the Libyan Brotherhood is also negotiating a coalition with more radical Islamist groups.
In the west, the fight is between secular movements seeking a “Mediterranean future” for Libya and groups preaching Arab nationalism.
The only organized pro-Khadafi group, Tawareghan, hasn’t been allowed to offer a list of its own, but those nostalgic for the fallen despot are competing for a few seats, especially in Sirte.
Other remnants of the old regime count on their wealth and control of many businesses to secure a presence in the assembly. They’ve also managed to revive some of their old networks and circles of clients.
Non-Arab ethnic groups, known as Berbers and speaking three versions of the Amazigh language, are likely to emerge as a separate bloc, as are black Africans, who form a majority in the southern provinces.
Some commentators have expressed fears that in Libya, as in other Arab Spring countries, the advent of free elections may lead to domination by Islamist groups or the disintegration of the country.
Anything is possible, but nothing is inevitable. Libya is not the monolith that Khadafy claimed. It is a mosaic of ethnic groups, tribes, languages and cultures. Allowing those differences to be freely expressed and accommodated in a pluralist system could, in fact, strengthen national unity.
Thanks to their financial resources and decades of clandestine organization, Libyan Islamists and allies may well win a plurality in the coming assembly, as their counterparts did in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. But, again like their counterparts in those countries where credible elections have been held, Libyan Islamists are unlikely to win a straight majority.
This means they won’t secure a popular base strong enough to replace Khadafy’s “nationalist” despotism with a new dictatorship in the name of religion.