There have been a number of meetings of the HoR called to vote on the GNA but the meetings have either had no quorum or in two cases were disrupted with no vote. Kobler has not had much to say about having the vote but a recent article in the Libya Herald says: The Libya Dialogue begins two days of meeting in Tunis tomorrow to try and find a way to persuade the House of Representatives to vote on the Government of National Accord and the adoption of a controversial article in the Libya Political Agreement (LPA) signed in Skhirat last December. Article 8 of the LPA moves control of the armed forces from the HoR to the Presidency Council. For it to have effect would require parliament to approve an amendment to the 2011 Constitutional Declaration.
Perhaps the coming meetings will deal with arranging a vote of confidence in the GNA, but it is not clear how it could deal with the adoption of Article 8 of the LPA. The article came into effect once the Skhirat agreement was signed according to Article 8 of the additional provisions and once the GNA was activated according to Article 8 in the main text. The Presidential Council has already used its power in forming a unified command for forces under its control but Haftar and his allies refuse to join. The vote on amending the Constitutional Declaration is just to ensure that the GNA is part of the declaration. The HoR will need to vote on the LPA and GNA as a whole. Allowing the HoR just to vote on parts would open up a Pandora’s box and is counter to what the Special Representative to the Secretary General (SRSG), Martin Kobler has always maintained, that the LPA cannot be amended.
The Dialogue consists of 40 members who agreed with the draft of the LPA presented to them by Kobler. Neither parliament of the time, the General National Congress (GNC) based in Tripoli nor the rival House of Representatives(HoR) based in Tobruk, approved the draft. Those from the two parliaments who signed were not authorized to do so by their respective parliaments. The Skhirat was an agreement by which the UN avoided requiring the two parliaments to approve the LPA..
One problem remained however and that was that the HoR had to vote confidence in the GNA before it became active and its term began. The HoR has yet to hold a formal vote on the issue. The last time the Political Dialogue was called together was to give its blessing for the GNA to be activated and move to Tripoli even though there was no formal vote from the HoR. The GNA was satisfied that it had a green light to become active and move to Tripoli. In other words, the Dialogue was used as a means of avoiding a section of the agreement that it had been unable to fulfill.
The same is likely to be the case this time, as in order to form a GNA that extends across Libya and has the HoR as its legislature, Kobler must get the HoR to vote confidence in the GNA. He has been unable to do this and it is not clear how he will be able to do so. Instead he may very well present some scheme that avoids a formal vote altogether but nevertheless somehow provides the GNA with some members of the HoR who approve his plan and who will constituted the GNA legislature. However, whatever his plan is, Kobler has not yet revealed.
Kobler has had meetings both in Cairo and Brussels during the last three days and no doubt he has discussed wht might be done with them. He met with Mahmoud Jibril, former PM and leader of the National Forces Alliance Party. In Brussels he talked with NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg, and the EU’s Maciej Poopowski. The Tunis meeting is shaping up to be a star-studded media event in a five-star Tunis hotel with foreign dignitaries attending including Jonathan Winer, Obama’s special envoy to Libya. Kobler’s tweet on the issue gives no detail of any plans but says that the Dialogue would be exploring practical steps “to build common ground and make the GNA more effective.”
The only more detailed suggesting Kobler floated earlier in the week suggested that the armed forces could be regionalized, with military councils for the west, south and east. As discussed in a recent article in Digital Journal, this hardly seems practical and there is no certainty Khalifa Haftar would accept it. Haftar so far has refused to talk with Kobler. The Libya Herald says: This might win the backing of the HoR in the east, where there is support for the Khalifa Hafter. However the Misratan attitude toward the man appointed by parliament as the commander-in-chief of the Libyan armed forces has only hardened as the city’s fighter had suffered heavy losses in the drive against IS terrorists in Sirte. They would seem unlikely to back the three regional command structure.
There is also the problem that in the east, the Petroleum Facilities Guard support the GNA while in the west, the ZIntan brigades support Haftar. As the Herald notes, Kobler messaged today that a “joint army command under the PC was the key to stability”. He appears to have in effect abandoned the regionalization plan.
The Herald remarks that emphasis was placed on the fact that the LPA could not be changed when it was signed in Skhirat last December. We should know soon whether that has changed or if there will be some attempt to work around the terms, such as happened during the last meetings of the Dialogue.
