The United Nations is trying to manage the postponement of Libya's presidential elections, which are due to take place on 24 December, as fears grow that a looming political vacuum will lead to more violence and economic chaos.
There has been no formal announcement on a postponement, but all sides acknowledge that the vote can't proceed because a list of authorised candidates has yet to be published.
There are tensions over whether or not the interim government of national unity can stay in office after its formal term ends on the 24th. Four major oilfields have been shut due to their occupation by militia, and roadblocks and armed vehicles have begun to appear in parts of the capital, Tripoli.
Fadel Lamen, a leading presidential candidate, said the position was very fluid and dangerous. Lamen said that some of us are trying to crystallise a new roadmap. There are different scenarios: very short postponement, just a shift in the date to clarify the outstanding legal issues, such as a candidate's qualifications, or a longer six-month delay, but once you go for such a long delay, anything can happen. Stephanie Williams, the UN spokesman for Libya, has been conducting urgent consultations in the country in an effort to reach an agreement on how it can maintain a semblance of momentum towards democracy.
The announcement of the delay was postponed because of a dispute between two Libyan bodies over responsibility for the delay.
The High National Elections Commission, HNEC, the technical body overseeing the elections, says it is the responsibility of the House of Representatives, the High National Elections Commission, to make the announcement, but the house is refusing to meet until after the election day, when it will announce its plans on how to proceed. Some members of the house have called for a new government to be created, claiming that the mandate of the interim government, formed in February to take the country through elections has expired.
There was no consensus on the legal framework for the elections, including the qualification criteria for candidates, between Europe and the US on the 24 December date for presidential and parliamentary elections for more than a year.
The HNEC handed over its still unpublished report to the House of Representatives on the eligibility of some of the candidates seeking to stand. Over three of the most prominent candidates have been question marks: the renegade General Khalifa Haftar, leader of the self-styled Libyan National Army, which controls the country s east and parts of the south; Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, the interim prime minister, who pledged that he would not stand in the presidential election.
The US ambassador to Libya, Richard Norland, acknowledged that there are political and legal obstacles to the elections going ahead and that new proposals, none of them ideal, are being discussed.
He also pointed out to Dbeibah that he should not use the interim premiership as a base to campaign for the presidency.
Lamen said there was consensus that this corrupt government has to go. It is not clear who is empowered to form a new caretaker government.
Williams was UN special envoy to Libya from March 2020 to January 2021 and then handed over a roadmap to elections to her successor J n Kubi in November, but he quit after his disastrous hands-off approach gave the existing Libyan political class an opening to slow the progress to elections.
There were no substantive issues over the necessary conditions for running an election, including an agreed legal framework to hold them, constitutional checks and balances on a ruling president, and eligibility criteria for vetting candidates.
Without any consensus on their basis, it became increasingly likely that the elections would lead to a disputed outcome. This could be disastrous given the tinderbox conditions in Libya, an oil-rich country that has been ravaged by a decade of violence since a Nato-backed rebellion that toppled and killed the strongman Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Williams was back in the job on December 12 after she privately urged various parties to revive the route to elections with a new timetable.
She hopes to find new ways to reapply pressure on existing political bodies in Libya that have traditionally acted as spoilers, and persuade them to agree a new timetable and basis for elections.
She previously tried to go round the roadblock of the existing political class by appointing a 75 strong Libya political dialogue forum, but the credibility of that body fell soon after her departure.