Crucial discussions will take place in Italy to salvage the Libyan elections

The new Parliamentary Special Committee will have its first hearings next Sunday following the Eid al-Adha holiday.

This Committee was established by a resolution of the Libyan Parliament to create an electoral law and organize elections. It is yet to be seen if it is only parliamentary or presidential before the Libyan political road map is established.

The length of the upcoming Rome discussions has not been disclosed as of yet, although they are likely to span several days.

According to NOVA, high-level Libyan leaders such as Speaker of the House of Representatives Aguila Saleh and President of the National High Electoral Commission Emad Al-Sayyah would attend these sessions.

It will be recognized that the previous session of the Libyan political dialogue ended without a consensus on the constitutional foundation for the elections.

The United Nations Envoy for Libya, Jan Kubis, acknowledged in his briefing to the Security Council that there were “blocks and groups of different interests and affiliations within the Forum that failed to agree on the final proposal for the elections,” noting that as a result of this failure, “the situation in Libya has become more difficult, more confrontational, and more tense.”

The United Nations envoy condemned the primacy of “institutional, political, and individual interests” and was hampered by the road to an agreement on the necessary legislative framework for the holding of elections on December 24, a date urged to be respected by Security Council resolution 2570, as well as the outcome of the Berlin 2 Conference and the Political Forum’s road map.

Kubis also voiced his dissatisfaction with the “usage of various techniques by all current forces, frequently presenting reasonable points, and the outcome is one, obstructing elections.” The envoy, who has had similar experiences in the past, labelled them as saboteurs, a precise description given their approach and manoeuvring, noting that the UN Support Mission in Libya “continues to make efforts to reach common ground through a mini-consensus committee formed during the Forum sessions.”