The Limitations of Elections in Resolving Political Divisions in Tunisia and Libya

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2024, pp. 52-53

Special Report

By Mustafa Fetouri

TWO NORTH AFRICAN countries—Tunisia, where the Arab Spring was born, and Libya, where it died—are dealing with election challenges, but their main problems are very different. Tunisia’s main headache is the lack of economic growth; in Libya, competition among political players has led to a stalemate. Tunisia lacks Libya’s oil-generated billions of dollars (mostly lost to corruption at any rate), while Libya lack Tunisia’s peaceful political social atmosphere, one in which guns and bullets have no place in the political struggle. 

TUNISIA’S PRESIDENT UP FOR REELECTION

Tunisians are heading to the polls again. Before the end of October 2024, they will vote for a new legislature and by early November they will vote for a new president. President Kais Saied has not announced whether he will seek a second term; if he does seek a second term to “finish his work,” reforming the political system as many of his supporters want, he will not face any serious challenger and is likely to easily win a second five-year term. 

The only person to announce her candidacy, so far, is 40-year-old Olfa Hamdi, a completely unknown and fresh political outsider. She was the CEO of Tunisia’s national carrier, Tunisair, for less than two months when she was dismissed in February 2021. Hamdi describes her goal as being a “realization” of the missed 2011 Jasmine Revolution’s objectives. In a rare interview she said that the revolution was about “jobs, dignity and freedom” but “we missed jobs” while achieving the other two. Notably, she quoted the late U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s famous line that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Her Third Republic Party for Tunisia is as new to the political scene as she is. Not many people take her seriously—but then President Saied himself was an outsider without political credentials when he first burst into the scene and won the presidency five years ago. 

The economy is the top election issue for Tunisians as they struggle to make ends meet. Voters are eager for change but most political parties are banned from campaigning on national TV stations and their leaders are being prosecuted. Hamdi’s Third Republic Party focuses on the economy but it offers no comprehensive economic plan and seems to be supportive of the current President Saied’s policies. Independents are expected to win most seats making it difficult to form a government. 

Compared to next-door Libya, Tunisia appears to be doing much better in terms of stability and social peace. At least the country, despite all its quarrels and differences, did not slide into war in the aftermath of its 2011 revolt as its eastern neighbor did. Overall, however, Tunisia hasn’t made any leaps forward to become a politically stable and economically prosperous country.

Since 2011, Tunisians have voted at least five times either in local or national elections or to approve a new constitution their country adopted twice (the last being in July 2022). Their Libyan neighbors voted only two times in the same time period. However, Tunisian stability is superficial: the current president has been running the country on his own while many opposition leaders have been jailed or sentenced in absentia like former president Moncef Marzouki who received an eight-year-jail term in February 2024 while in exile in France. Critics of the situation in the country, like social scientist Afif Bouni, think what appears to be success is only a “mirage of success” creating a bigger “illusion of achievements” than have really been achieved on the ground. 

LIBYA ELECTIONS ON HOLD

During the last few years Libyans have also voted in some partial municipal elections but no such votes really delivered any tangible results in terms of local government services, governance and improved living conditions let alone having any effect at the national level. Libya remains politically divided between two different administrations, one in Tripoli recognized by the United Nations and another in Benghazi, in the east, recognized by nobody, conditions that make both local and national elections meaningless. 

The last time U.N. mediators attempted to organize presidential and legislative elections in Libya was in December 2021, but differences over election laws, eligibility and a host of other issues made it impossible for the polls to take place. No serious attempt has so far been made to tackle the issues, despite the efforts of U.N. envoy Abdoulaye Bathily of Senegal, who is frequently described as “hesitant, unimaginative and unfair.” The biggest bone of contention among always-quarrelling political figures and parties is elections laws. 

A positive side of the deadlock is the emerging national consensus that another violent episode will not produce any winners and would further divide the country along regional lines, and this after it was divided along tribal lines years ago.

Libyan protagonists appear to agree on three nos: no war, no elections and no unified government before 2025. This means Libyans are likely to endure the status quo for at least another year before any serious work is done toward elections. Libyans hope elections, whenever they come, will end the long transitional period. Many are happy that war is not an option this time because it could be even more devastating than the last war in 2019-2020 and it might lead to a partition of the country.

SIMILAR RESERVATIONS TO ELECTIONS IN LIBYA AND TUNISIA

But in both Libya and Tunisia the legality of elections within the present constitutional settings in each country are a huge source of contention. In Tunisia the entire opposition is refusing to take part in any elections under the 2022 constitution, which was edited by the president himself who happened to be a former constitutional law professor before turning politician in 2019. Opponents claim that the document gives little authority to parliament because the president, not the prime minister, has veto powers and is not accountable to parliament, undermining democratic gains made since 2011.

Libya is similar but with a twist: the main issues in contention are eligibility for the presidency and how to determine the legality of an election outcome. Last October, the parliament passed two new laws to govern the process: law 27 for parliamentarian elections and law 28 governing the presidential poll. However, neither law cleared up the issues of eligibility and determining the electoral winners. The U.N.’s mission in the country found the laws unhelpful.

Current Libyan laws exclude any holder of a second citizenship from running for office. Many presidential hopefuls are thought to have a second nationality including the eastern-based strongman General Khalifa Haftar, who is believed to be an American citizen. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the overthrown leader, enjoys wide public support to be president but is still wanted by the International Criminal Court despite being pardoned along with hundreds of others by Libya’s general amnesty law of 2015. 

The presidential elections law, weirdly, requires two rounds of voting even if a candidate wins the first round with an absolute majority. Since it was passed, the law has become a source of contention and ridicule by many Libyans. Organizing elections and making sure everybody accepts their outcomes are big hurdles and even if they are overcome it is unlikely that elections will settle the country’s issues  once and for all.

Mustafa Fetouri is a Libyan academic and freelance journalist. He received the EU’s Freedom of the Press prize. He has written extensively for various media outlets on Libyan and MENA issues. He has published three books in Arabic. His email is mustafafetouri@hotmail.com and Twitter: @MFetouri.