
A Libyan committee overseeing the country's first presidential election on Friday has concluded that holding the vote on time will be the latest blow to a troubled peace process.
The vote was to mark a new start for Libya a year after a landmark ceasefire and more than a decade after the 2011 revolt that toppled and killed Moamer Kadhafi.
There had been a lot of speculation of a delay for weeks due to the dispute over the vote's legal basis, the powers of the winner and the candidacies of several deeply divisive figures.
On Wednesday, the chairman of the committee wrote to the Speaker of Parliament, saying that after consulting the technical, judicial and security reports, we inform you of the impossibility of holding the elections on the date of December 24, 2021, a date set last year during UN-led peace talks in Tunis.
The vote, intended to go hand-in- hand with parliamentary elections, was part of a United Nations-led peace process overshadowed by corruption allegations and the resignation of special envoy Jan Kubis just weeks before the elections.
The vote was stricken by rancorous divisions over whether controversial figures should be allowed to stand.
Seif al-Islam Kadhafi, son of Moamer, and eastern military chief Khalifa Haftar, were both in the running despite accusations of war crimes.
Interim Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah's candidacy sparked controversy as he pledged not to run as part of his original leadership bid.
Claudia Gazzini, a Libyan expert at the International Crisis Group, said every faction in Libya has an issue with one of these three candidates.
She told AFP that they tried to stop these candidates from running using legal means but failing that there seems to have been an informal agreement between some factions not to let the elections go forward.
Many analysts have warned that violence could flare again after the elections.
The political uncertainty has raised tensions on the ground in Libya, controlled by an array of armed groups, including thousands of foreign mercenaries.
Gunmen had deployed in the suburbs of Tripoli on Tuesday, using a tank and machine gun-mounted pickup trucks to block roads in the Fornaj district, although tensions eased later in the day.
Amanda Kadlec, a former member of the UN Panel of Experts on Libya, said if the elections were postponed but another date was set, that would minimize tensions and possibly prevent conflicts. But if elections are postponed without any kind of path forward, anxieties will be high.
She told AFP that I could imagine there being a breakout of conflict at local levels that could erupt and cascade into other parts of the country or within each region.
The country has seen a year of relative calm since the October 2020 ceasefire after a year-long offensive by Haftar's forces on Tripoli, with both sides backing foreign states backing it.
The potential for new fighting in Libya remains despite the vast stockpiles of weapons left behind by the Kadhafi regime.
The High National Electoral Commission HNEC had not published a finalized list of candidates and analysts suggested that no side wanted to take responsibility for the election being cancelled.