On Saturday, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) announced that the participants to the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF) concluded voting on picking one of the presented proposals for a selection mechanism to decide upon Libya’s next unified executive authority.
The vote took place on Thursday and Friday 3-4 December 2020. The Acting Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Libya, Stephanie Williams, hosted on Saturday a virtual meeting to inform the LPDF participants of the voting process’ results and to discuss the way forward.
UNSMIL said in a statement that 71 LPDF members have participated in the voting process, while one member was unable to participate for health-related reasons and three members abstained.
“39 LPDF members voted for proposal number 2, while 24 members voted for proposal number 3 and 8 other members voted for proposal number 10,” UNSMIL said in a statement.
Williams reaffirmed UNSMIL’s commitment to respect the decision of the LPDF participants taken during the recent in-person meeting in Tunisia, according to which decisions should be reached on a consensual basis.
She announced that a virtual session will be held in the coming days to discuss the next steps based on the very productive suggestion presented by many of the LPDF members during Saturday’s session.
She underlined the importance of the work that is being undertaken by the High National Elections Commission (HNEC) in preparing for the national elections that were agreed to be held on 24 December 2021. Williams welcomed the decision of the Libyan government to allocate budget for the HNEC so as to start the preparations and urged for the immediate disbursal of the promised funds.
The statement by UNSMIL pointed out that Williams emphasized the progress achieved in the economic track, in particular the upcoming meeting of the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Libya, which is expected to tackle the unification of the exchange rate.