Libyan protesters storm, set parl on fire in the east
TRIPOLI: Protesters stormed Libya’s parliament in the eastern city of Tobruk on Friday and set parts of it ablaze, venting their anger at deteriorating living conditions and months of political deadlock.
Black smoke billowed as men burned tyres and torched cars after one protester had smashed through the compound’s gate with a bulldozer and others attacked the walls with construction tools, local media reported. The building was empty, as Friday falls on the weekend in Libya.
Libya’s House of Representatives has been based in Tobruk, more than 1,000km east of the capital Tripoli, since an eastwest schism in 2014 that came three years after a mass popular revolution toppled dictator Moamer Gadhafi.
A separate legislature, formally known as the High Council of State, is based in Tripoli as the oil-rich country remains divided between rival administrations vying for control.
Libya, sweltering in summer heat, has endured days of power cuts - a situation worsened by the blockade of key oil facilities amid the political rivalries. “We want the lights to work,” chanted protesters, some of whom were brandishing the green flags of the Gadhafi regime.
The parliament condemned the “acts of vandalism and the burning” of its headquarters.
The interim PM of the Tripoli-based government, Abdulhamid Dbeibah, meanwhile voiced support for the protesters’ concerns in a Twitter message. The two governments have been vying for power in Libya for months: the one based in Tripoli, led by Dbeibah, and another headed by former interior minister Fathi Bashagha, appointed by the parliament and supported by eastern-based strongman Khalifa Haftar.
Presidential and parliamentary elections, originally set for last December, were meant to cap a UN-led peace process following the end of the last major round of violence in 2020.
But the vote was never held due to several contentious candidacies and disagreements over the polls’ legal basis between the rival power centres. The UN said on Thursday that talks between the rival Libyan institutions aimed at breaking the deadlock had failed to resolve key differences.
Parliament speaker Aguila Saleh and High Council of State president Khaled al-Mishri met at the UN in Geneva to discuss a draft constitutional framework for elections. While some progress was made, it was not enough to move forward towards elections, with the two sides still at odds over who could stand in a presidential vote, said the UN’s top Libya envoy Stephanie Williams.