On Saturday, the Special Representative of the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General and Head of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), Abdoulaye Bathily, called on all Libyan political parties to reach the consensus required to achieve a constitutional base and hold elections.
This was articulated during a meeting with members of the Presidential Council, Abdullah Al-Lafi and Moussa Al-Koni.
According to a statement by the Libyan Presidential Council, Bathily reviewed the results of his meetings with a number of Libyan political parties inside and outside of Libya. During the meeting they discussed the latest developments in the situation in Libya. They also spoke about ways to push the political process to run the elections to achieve the aspirations of the Libyan people and to agree on its results from all parties.
According to the statement, Al-Lafi and Al-Koni affirmed the Presidential Council’s keenness to cooperate with Bathily to achieve stability in Libya. They confirmed supporting him to end the transitional stages by holding elections and the success of the national reconciliation project.
Notably, the former Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on Libya, Stephanie Williams, said that concealing the international audit report on the performance of the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) was a mistake.
In a press interview published by Libya’s Al-Wasat newspaper, Williams said that there was a lot of resistance to exercising transparency and accountability for obvious reasons. However, she did not name the reasons. She noted that the completion of the audit was an ideal opportunity to engage in the exercise of transparency, accountability, and implementation. “But unfortunately, the decision was made to allow the current government (the Al-Dbaiba government) to take the audit report and put it in the drawer,” Williams said.
“I was told that the report had been given to Prime Minister Al-Dbaiba, who said the government would deal with this matter with the CBL. I don’t know the content of the report, because at that time it disappeared. It was simply a terribly stupid mistake,” Williams added.
While praising the CBL’s steps by issuing a monthly statement on its activities, Williams stressed that the CBL is still not working as it should. She stressed that the CBL should be administered by the Board of Governors, “this is the Libyan banking law, and you cannot have a sovereign institution that violates the law,” she explained.
Williams affirmed that the United States (US) should remain involved in the economic file. She explained that the Al-Dbaiba government is not an elected government, that it is temporary and lacks that legitimacy that comes only through the ballot box.
She said that the Al-Dbaiba government was supposed to have been given a specific task such as preparing for elections, responding to the Covid-19 epidemic and helping municipalities, not forming a huge cabinet of 27 Ministers.
