Libya: Will the Revolution be the Last Solution?
The United Nations called for calm in Libya after protesters stormed the parliament headquarters in the eastern city of Tobruk on Friday night and set fire to part of the building.
The Special Adviser to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on Libya, Stephanie Turco Williams, said in a tweet on Twitter that “the right of the people to peaceful protest must be respected and protected,” but stressed that the storming of the House of Representatives is totally unacceptable. She added that the responsible Libyan leadership must show restraint by all.
Angry demonstrations took place in several Libyan cities on Friday in protest against the deteriorating living conditions in the country, including the continued power outages and high prices.
Several hundred people gathered in Tripoli’s Martyrs’ Square, chanting slogans demanding electricity, criticizing armed factions and politicians, and calling for elections, in the largest protests in the capital against the ruling elite in years.
Later on Friday, dozens of protesters stood next to the government headquarters building in Tripoli, chanting, “We want electricity, we want electricity.”
Other protests by dozens of demonstrators also erupted in Benghazi, Al-Bayda, Misrata and some smaller towns, in an indication of the extension of popular anger to include the various forces competing for the leadership of the country.
The head of the Interim National Unity Government, Abdel Hamid al-Dabaiba, said that he “joins his voice with the demonstrators throughout the country.”
Dabaiba called, according to what was reported by local media, for “the departure of all bodies, including the government,” stressing that “there is no way to do that except through elections,” blaming parties “the Libyans know who is responsible ” for “obstructing” the elections.
The unrest comes a day after UN-brokered talks in Geneva aimed at paving the way for elections in Libya ended without progress.
Libya has been in chaos since the 2011 uprising, which was backed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that toppled the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
The seat of the Libyan Parliament has been moved to the city of Tobruk in the far east of the country, hundreds of miles from the capital, Tripoli, since the divisions that occurred between the Libyan parties in 2014 and witnessed the storming of the headquarters of the Libyan House of Representatives (National Congress) in the capital, Tripoli.
In February, the eastern Libyan parliament appointed Fathi Bashagha as prime minister in defiance of Tripoli-based Abdel Hamid Dabaiba.
Dabaiba was appointed as the head of a national unity government in March 2020 as part of UN peace efforts.
The duties of the Dabaiba government included leading Libya to elections on December 24, but the elections were canceled amid sharp divisions over its legal foundations and the nomination of several controversial figures.
While Morocco has tried over the years to bring together all the Libyan parties, in cooperation with the United Nations, observers wonder whether this uprising in eastern Libya is a natural response to the permissiveness of the militias backed by regional military regimes in the region.
