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Disputed Votes and Walkouts Yet Libya Gets New ‘Islamist’ PM

Monday, May 5, 2014 1:23

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(Before It's News)

Ahmed Mitig won 121 votes out of a maximum 200 in a final run-off in the country’s parliament Photo: EPA

Stephen: BTW – Still no results announcement out of Iraq following last Wednesday’s election…

By Callum Paton and Richard Spencer, The Telegraph – May 4, 2014 – http://tinyurl.com/n2xfamq

A businessman backed by Islamists has assumed one of the world’s least desired public offices after being elected Libya’s new prime minister amid worsening battles between security forces, militias, and extremists.

Ahmed Mitig, 42, who comes from Misurata, one of the centres of the uprising against Col Gaddafi three years ago, won 121 votes out of a maximum 200 in a final run-off in the country’s parliament, the General National Congress.

The vote was immediately condemned as illegal, including by the official spokesman and at least one member who voted for Mr Mitig.

He is the fifth prime minister since Col Gaddafi’s downfall. His predecessor, Abdullah al-Thinni, appointed on an interim basis, declined to stand after gunmen attacked his family home in the middle of April. Before that, Ali Zeidan survived a botched kidnap attempt, gunfire, and allegations of corruption, before finally resigning and fleeing to Germany.

A previous attempt to elect the prime minister was stymied on Wednesday when supporters of a candidate eliminated at an early stage stormed the session, firing guns.

The election took place amid a stand-off between police, militias and separatists in the country’s second city, Benghazi. On Friday, at least nine people and probably several more were killed as Islamist militants, believed to be from the group Ansar al-Sharia which has a strong following in the city, attacked what the government described as “the legitimate forces of the Libyan state”.

That is a loaded term in Libya, where numerous militias maintain armed patrols and claim to operate on behalf of the government but often fight among themselves. In this case, though, the target of the attack was the Benghazi Security Directorate, an umbrella organisation for official police and security forces.

A second force nominally aligned to the army, the revolutionary “Lightning Bolt Special Forces Brigade”, then joined in to protect the directorate. The fighting lasted for five hours.

The security situation has worsened over the last year across the country, with the central government unable to force the competing militias to disarm.

Mr Zeidan was caught between local city militias like those from Misurata and the western city of Zintan, both of which had a strong presence in the capital, and who resent the power of the broad Islamist movement based in Benghazi, and the General National Congress, which is dominated by a spectrum of Islamists from moderate to hard-line.

Ansar al-Sharia was accused of co-ordinating the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi in 2012 in which the ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was killed.

Britain, the United States, and other allies are all attempting to help the central government reestablish order, offering to train police. But there have been delays in arranging travel abroad for those selected.

The US state department’s annual report on terrorism last week said that Libya’s porous border, plethora of weapons and lack of security were creating “opportunities for violent extremists”.

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