“Nothing in this agreement makes us think that we are anywhere closer to holding elections.” That was the verdict of Claudia Gazzini, a senior Libya analyst at the International Crisis Group, on a road map signed this week by Libya’s rival factions at the UN Support Mission in Libya (Unsmil) in Tripoli.
The four-page document calls for presidential and parliamentary elections within 24 months. It also tries to settle disputes over electoral laws and to restructure the country’s election commission. Libya has had no national vote since 2014.
What the deal says
Presidential and parliamentary votes would be held together. Military personnel could vote and stand as candidates, and Libyans with dual citizenship could run for president if they give up their second nationality before taking office. For parliamentary elections, the deal uses the 2014 election law as its template rather than the legislation produced by the 6+6 committee, which the House of Representatives and the High Council of State formed.
The text also says elections should take place under a single executive authority and unified national institutions. If that cannot be done, the parties would work with the UN mission on another mechanism.
The deal came out of the 4+4 committee, which has eight members: two from the House, two from the High Council of State, and two each from Abdul Hamid Dbeibah’s Tripoli-based government and Gen Khalifa Haftar’s eastern forces.
The doubts
Gazzini said the single-executive clause is a problem, because the agreement never explains how the rival authorities are supposed to form one. The same divisions that have blocked elections are being treated as something to fix before voting can happen.
She also pointed out that the negotiators from the Tripoli and Benghazi sides “have not referred back to their assemblies.” Those assemblies, she said, disagree with the format because they had no say in who was chosen. The agreement offers nothing on Libya’s divided judiciary, either. “I wouldn’t be surprised if parties or individuals start filing legal challenges to this agreement in the upcoming days and weeks,” Gazzini said. “The potential for non-implementation is huge.”
Othman Ben Sassi, a political analyst and former member of the post-2011 National Transitional Council, was blunter. “They are only trying to gain time,” he told The National. He cited worsening electricity and energy problems as proof of the gap between high-level meetings and daily life. “People won’t care about such a project,” he said. He also argued that a presidential election without an agreed constitution would leave the powers of the presidency, the length of its mandate and the form of government uncertain.
Ben Sassi said the obstacles are not mainly technical. Several armed groups in the west keep real military power, he said, and officials in both east and west have stayed in office far beyond their original terms. “Those groups and officials fear that a genuine election could remove them from power,” he said. “Members of parliament and the High Council of State have been in place for the past 15 years.”
A Libyan politician who spoke to The National anonymously rejected the committee’s outcome and its power-sharing arrangements. Libya’s future, the politician said, “should not be decided in negotiating rooms, but through the will of the people.”
Earlier failures and US involvement
A UN-backed process produced an election set for December 2021. It was postponed indefinitely over the legal framework and who could stand. Libya has seen little stability since the 2011 uprising against Muammar Qaddafi, which a Nato-led intervention backed. The country split in 2014 into warring eastern and western factions, though major fighting has been rare since a ceasefire was reached in 2020.
The US is pushing on a separate track. Massad Boulos, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, is leading an effort to bring the two camps closer. On Monday he called the 4+4 deal an “encouraging step forward” and urged the parties to move quickly on implementation, national elections and unified institutions. “Now is the time to build on this momentum,” he wrote on X.
