Libya goes to the polls on Saturday (July 7)

  Today (Friday) is a cooling off day with no campaigning before polling starts tomorrow. The National Transitional Council has declared a holiday so people can vote.
   Many residents in the eastern part of the country are angry that they have been allocated only 60 seats in the 200 member assembly that is to be elected. Indeed there have been demonstrations and even a fire in Ajdabiya that destroyed ballots. An election office was also stormed in Benghazi There is also conflict still ongoing in the south of the country between different tribes. In some areas voting may not even be possible.
    There are 2,500 candidates running for the 200 seats. Many of those running have Islamist agendas. Under the Gadaffi regime parties were outlawed as promoting disunity. No doubt regional and tribal conflicts will remain after the voting is over. For more see this article.

Unpaid fighters surround headquarter of Libyan transitional government

Revolutionaries complaining about not being paid rewards promised for fighting Gadaffi have surrounded and attacked the main headquarters of the transitional government in Tripoli. There are no reports of casualties so far.

A government employee told reporters:"Many men encircled the building and opened fire against it with weapons including anti-aircraft cannons," A number of trucks with mounted anti-aircraft guns surrounded the headquarters in the center of Tripoli.

The troops are said to be from the Nafusa mountains. The interim government had decided to halt stipends for former fighters because of massive corruption and fraud. An interim government spokesperson said that the defense minister was negotiating with those surrounding the headquarters. He also noted that the fighters were protesting unpaid stipends For more see this article.

Libyan interim government bans political parties base on religion

The first general elections are to be held in Libya in two months. The 200 members elected will draft a new constitution and form a government.

The law banning religious parties was immediately denounced by Islamic oriented parties that intend to compete in the June elections. A government spokesperson said that the move was meant to preserve national unity. If the ruling makes the main Islamist parties ineligible to run this will hardly preserve national unity.

No parties were allowed under the Gadaffi regime among the reasons being the one used by the transitional council to ban religious parties that parties divide the people and are against national unity. The government spokesperson said:."Parties shouldn't be based on ethnic or religious ideologies," "We don't want the government to be divided by these ideological differences." He was silent on what the new law meant for the Freedom and Development party founded by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood sponsored party is expected to do well in elections as Islam oriented parties have done in Egypt and Tunisia. A spokesperson for the Freedom and Development party said:"This is not democracy," "We don't understand this law ... It could mean nothing, or it could mean that none of us can participate in the election,'"We are a nationalist party and Islam is our religion. This law is unacceptable and only suits liberals."

Libya is made up mostly of Sunni Muslims. The new law seems out of step with the government announce that the government would be run in accordance with Sharia law although the exact role of the law would wait upon drafting of the constitution. There are enough problems and divisions in Libya already without the government itself introducing conflict as this law has. For more see this article.

Libya: Militias need to be disarmed before they start a civil war

  In a speech in Benghazi the chair of the Libyan National Transitional Council Mustafa Jalil said that there was a pressing need to disarm rebel militias that helped defeat Gadaffi. If the militias were not disarmed civil war or partition of Libya would develop.
    The chief of the Libyan military General Mangoush claims that the military is rebuilding bases and also acquiring newer weapons. He said that the military is determined to disarm the rebel militias.
   However, militia groups retain control of a number of regions and are loathe to give up their arms. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun in many cases. Some major cities such as Misrata are under the control of militias. There has even been conflict between rival militias within neighborhoods in Tripoli. Now that Gadaffi is gone regional and tribal differences are surfacing within Libya making it difficult for the transitional government to unify the country. For more see this article.