Libya?s post-war transitional government faced a political crisis Sunday after protesters ransacked its offices in Benghazi, highlighting growing nationwide unease with its leadership and triggering a shakeup in which the government?s deputy chief resigned and several members were suspended.
For months, youth groups with a range of complaints have been protesting against the National Transitional Council in Benghazi, the eastern city whose protests sparked the nine-month revolt and which once served as the rebel capital. Protests have cropped up elsewhere too, including Tripoli, the capital, where activists have erected a small tent city across from the prime minister?s office.
Protesters complain that the transitional council?s operations are too opaque and that many of its members are tainted by past ties, real or suspected, with the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
On Saturday night, those frustrations boiled over when an crowd of mostly young men attacked the council?s offices in Benghazi, smashing windows and forcing their way inside the building while the council?s chairman, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, was inside.
The spark appeared to be the online release of a draft election law for the 200 members of a constituent assembly. Activists said it was prepared without consultation or public oversight and that its winner-take-all rules would encourage Libyans to vote along tribal lines or for locally rich or prominent citizens, and undercut those seeking to form new parties.
Seeking to contain the fallout from the incident, Abdel Hafedh Ghogha, the transitional council?s deputy chief, resigned on Sunday, telling Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera: ?My resignation is for the benefit of the nation and is required at this stage.?
Speaking to reporters in Benghazi on Sunday, Mr. Abdel-Jalil warned that continued protests could lead the country down a perilous path and pleaded with protesters to give the government more time to govern.
?We are going through a political movement that can take the country to a bottomless pit,? Reuters quoted him as saying. ?There is something behind these protests that is not for the good of the country.?
?The people have not given the government enough time, and the government does not have enough money,? Mr. Abdel Jalil said. ?Maybe there are delays, but the government has only been working for two months. Give them a chance, at least two months.?
The interim government also suspended several local members from Benghazi and announced it would form a council of religious figures to investigate government figures charged with corruption or ties to the former regime.
Both the incident itself and the leadership?s response were met with widespread anger in Benghazi, according to Salwa Bugaighis, a lawyer and political activist who was a leading figure in the Libyan uprising.
?We are worried,? she said. ?We are afraid that maybe it becomes worse.?
She said that protesters in Benghazi directed much of their rage at allegations that millions of dollars ? and perhaps billions ? in government money had gone unaccounted for.
?They want transparency. They want people from the Qaddafi regime to go,? she said. ?If there?s no transparency, everything will collapse.?
Protests have taken place in the city of Misurata as well, run by a rival leadership faction and where officials said they were planning to hold elections for a new local council in February without the blessing of the National Transitional Council.
?Everywhere there have been sit ins in and demonstrations against the N.T.C. accusing it of no transparency and dragging its feet and not taking any actions for transitional justice and many, many issues,? said Mohamed Benrasali, a spokesman for the Misurata council. ?We feel that the head of the regime has changed, but the rest of the regime is in place.?
Both Saturday?s protest and its political fallout demonstrated the challenges ahead for Libya, said Fred Abrahams, a special adviser on Libya for Human Rights Watch.
?Yesterday?s demonstration shows the extreme challenges after four decades of dictatorship,? said Fred Abrahams, Special Advisor on Libya for Human Rights Watch. ?Ousting Qaddafi will prove more straight-forward than getting a representative and transparent government to replace him.?
Critics of the interim government also complain that its performance has faltered on a nuts-and-bolts level.
Basic services have yet to be restored in some areas, while towns seen as sympathetic to Qaddafi, like Surt and Bani Walid, remain ruined after months of fighting.
The interim government has struggled to exert authority even in Tripoli, where the streets are largely controlled by a patchwork of regional militias whose members defer to their own commanders, not government security forces.
Mr Abdel-Jalil also accepted the resignation of the head of the Benghazi Local Council, Saleh el-Ghazal, an appointed figure whose replacement he pledged would be elected.
But on Sunday, authorities postponed the planned unveiling of the country?s draft election law, which has also been mired in controversy. A draft of the law released on Jan. 2 was criticized for barring dual-nationals from running for office, in a country where scores of the politically active were forced into exile.
It also set a 10 percent quote for female members of parliament , which feminist activists called ?insulting.? Rather than raise the quota, a revised draft released last week announced that the quota would be abolished entirely.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c5104b6f49924474ca70ba1b434fb337
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