Tunisia's Missing Democrats

At 9 a.m. on Wednesday, April 10, a Tunisian NGO sent out a photograph of the National Constituent Assembly on Twitter. In the photo, two out of Tunisia’s 217 nationally elected officials are seen at their desks. At 10 a.m, one hour after the scheduled starting time for a plenary session that included voting on the establishment of an independent judicial body, the same Twitter feed sent out an update: “38 deputies present in the chamber…”

According to the watchdog organization, Al-Bawsala, this problem of tardiness and absenteeism in Tunisia’s first genuinely democratic body has been relatively constant following the revolution. More than that, the problem gets to the heart of Tunisia’s continuing difficulties in transitional democracy.

“People are angry about this assembly,” says Selim Kharrat, Executive Director of Al-Bawsala.

“We accept that all parliaments suffer from absenteeism, but Tunisia is not normal,” he says, referring to Tunisia’s fragile democratic transition following decades of dictatorship.

Popular anger is compounded by the fact that assembly members have broken several deadlines for completing a new constitution, while they have voted to increase their salaries and benefits so that they now receive between five and ten times the average Tunisian salary.

The Tunisian National Constituent Assembly was democratically elected in October 2011, a landmark accomplishment for the first Arab country to overthrow its despot. The assembly was initially tasked with writing a new constitution within a year before dissolving. However, the body quickly took on the additional role of parliament. Al-Bawsala has been one of the few organizations to monitor nearly all of the assembly’s plenary sessions. They run a website that publishes the attendance and voting records of assembly members. In March, Al-Bawsala presented some of its finding to the assembly’s Commission of Rules and Procedure and Immunity.

“After 22 plenary sessions, held between January 17th and February 25th, 2013, we have recorded an average of 73 minutes of delay per session, with a peak of 2 hours and 45 minutes of delay. The average number of presence is 90 members out of 217,” the president of Al-Bawsala, Amira Yahyaoui told the elected officials.

The damning report caused a stir, garnering scathing criticism from some elected deputies and support from others. According to Kharrat, after their presentation, assembly Vice President Mehrezia Laabidi said: “We understand why people are upset with the assembly.” However, days after the report, the eldest member of the assembly, Tahar Hmila, called for Yahyaoui to be banned from entering the assembly before verbally attacking another Al-Bawsala employee, Myriam Ben Ghazi.

Asked why he confronted Al-Bawsala in this manner, Hmila, formerly the interim president of the assembly due to seniority, accused the NGO of being an agent of French imperialism.

“They are all Francophones… Civil society associations are all there to abort this revolution. They are against this constitution because it doesn’t accord with a French perspective,” he said.

Asked about Al-Bawsala’s stated commitment to transparency and accountability, he responded that “they are little liars.”

But Ben Ghazi says that his anger stems from the fact that Al-Bawsala recently caught him voting in support of the formation of the new government led by Prime Minister Ali Laarayedh, despite the fact that, publicly, he opposed its formation.

“All the old guys think they are the ultimate authority in Tunisia and no one should question them. They are so old-fashioned. They feel exposed, with no sense of privacy – and that’s what should happen. They just don’t get it,” says Ben Ghazi.

While Ben Ghazi says she has experienced hostility from some members, many others seek her out for information about their own voting records.

“Even assembly members come up and ask me: ‘What’s my percentage of absences?’ One chased me down the street. Some are worried about their numbers. Some want to brag about it,” she says.

In their initial report to the assembly’s internal rules commission, Al-Bawsala singled out some members for their attendance. They noted that member Mahmoud El May attended only 2 percent of the plenary sessions that focused on dealing with the formation of the independent election committee. El May, in his defense, notes that during those sessions, his time was divided between taking care of his sick wife and going to Turkey as part of an official delegation. He accuses Al-Bawsala of being unprofessional.

“They [Al-Bawsala] don’t try to verify [their information] – not even they didn’t ask me, they throw my name to the public, then my name is taken in the newspapers as 2 percent presence in all the assembly, which is not true, and then, when they see this error in the newspaper, they don’t go and correct. I found this very unprofessional.”

“When they give the name they should yes, he’s 2 percent, but overall he’s 65. Or you don’t give names. Then I checked my presence; I never checked my presence. The [vote] that came after, for the finance law of 2013, I was at 80 percent. They could say this… they are young people that are overpaid to put shit on people that are underpaid.”

Kharrat of Al-Bawsala concedes that El May has an excuse for his absence during this period, but justifies their publishing of the numbers as a way to fight the lack of accountability that plagues the assembly.

“He was on an official visit, but we don’t have access to this information. This assembly is very opaque. We are not asking MPs to be accountable to Al-Bawsala; we are only intermediaries,” says Kharrat.

Even some members of the assembly who publicly support the work of Al-Bawsala and greater transparency have been caught by the NGO’s watchful eye. Lobna Jeribi is an assembly member and part of the OpenGov transparency initiative. She claims (along with former party colleague Karima Souid) to be responsible for a new article in the assembly’s internal regulation that obliges the body to publish attendance figures. The move came after Al-Bawsala made its recommendations to the body’s internal rules commission.

“They push the ANC towards transparency. They stimulate and accelerate transparency,” says Jeribi. “Today, the assembly is the victim of this, that is to say ruled by transparency; it has implemented transparency. It is the victim of transparency in the sense that we are in our first democratic exercise. All institutions are in an apprenticeship.”

Ms. Jeribi herself was caught by Al-Bawsala when she voted on behalf of two of her absent colleagues during one plenary session. She apologized for doing so on her Facebook account after Al-Bawsala published the incident.

“Everybody noticed us since then and kept their distance. Every report we publish, there is a reaction in the assembly the day after,” says Ben Ghazi. “They started being more cautious.”

Surprisingly, the problem of absenteeism falls largely along party lines. Al-Bawsala’s March report initially included the ten assembly members with the best attendance records and the ten with the worst. The ten with the best records are all members of the ruling Islamist Ennahda party. While Al-Bawsala quickly removed the names of the worst offenders in preparation for a full re-launch of their watchdog website, the original list included top opposition figures, including Maya Jribi and Ahmed Nejib Chebbi of the Republic Party. Numerous interview requests, including direct phone calls, calls to their press attaché, their secretaries, and a visit to their party headquarters received no response.

Many have accused opposition parties of failing to attend sessions in a bid to see the Ennahdha-led government fall. However, Kharrat is skeptical of this explanation.

“I don’t believe this,” he says, noting that many opposition members are very active at the committee level in the assembly, and that his organization has received support from politicians of all stripes.  “The problem is one of responsibility… Some blocs used our report to attack other blocs, but it wasn’t our intention.”

According to Hela Hammi, a member of the assembly’s bureau and of the Ennahda party, the issue is one of discipline.

“Every day we [Ennahda party] pass a sheet, a sheet of presence. We prepare a list to record the absences, and they are published in our own offices.”

For Al-Bawsala, they are happy to see that their work and recommendations are finally being considered seriously by the assembly. Kharrat sees the problems as systemic, but he knows there isn’t much time to get a new constitution right.

“Old habits are very difficult to change. We are fighting against a culture,” says Kharrat. “We want [the assembly members] to respect their duties… This is a historic moment.”

A Murder in Tunis

The following is an excerpt from my latest analysis in Foreign Policy magazine. Click here to read the full piece.

TUNIS -- On the night of Feb. 5, prominent leftist politician Shoukri Belaid went on a popular Tunisian television station to denounce the political violence that had targeted him, his party, and other opposition groups. He gave at least one specific example where Islamists, allegedly associated with both the ultraconservative Salafi movement and the governing al-Nahda Party, recently attacked a meeting of his United Democratic Nationalist party in the interior town of El Kef. He said that security forces watched the attack take place but did nothing.

The following morning, Belaid was shot in the head and the chest as he was leaving his home. In the hours that followed, Tunisians took to the streets around the country to protest the escalating political violence and the slow pace of reform. Protesters gathered in front of the cordoned-off Interior Ministry in the capital, demanding a new revolution. There were widespread reports of clashes between police and protesters -- including in the birthplace of the Arab Spring, Sidi Bouzid, where protests first began in Tunisia. Al-Nahda Party headquarters in towns in the interior of the country were attacked, despite the fact that leaders from the party strongly condemned the assassination.

Continue reading here...

Police Reform without Justice in Tunisia?

Reportage and Analysis

 

How does a former police state reform its police force after a revolution? Tunisia’s over 70,000[1] security forces were instrumental in maintaining and promoting the old authoritarian regime led by former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The police forces in particular were usually the agents of oppression and torture used to silence opposition. The revolution of December 2010, January 2011 was itself sparked by an incident, by no means isolated or unique, of police abuse, and security forces killed and injured hundreds of protesters during the revolution.

“People do not trust police and the police officers do not trust citizens,” said Abdesattar Moussa, the president of the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH by its French initials), at a two-day, international symposium on police reform organized by civil society groups. “We need security in the service of society.”

Despite the government’s stated commitment to reform Tunisia’s security apparatus, there are glaring examples where the government has not dealt with pre-revolution abuses. Most of those security officials responsible for attacking protesters during the revolution have not been named by the government, let alone charged for criminal activity. Human rights activists have said that incidents of torture continue to take place, while police brutality continues at public demonstrations across the country.

So far, the government’s response appears to separate the issue of justice from that of reform. Said Mechichi is the state secretary charged with reform at the Ministry of the Interior. According to him, police reform begins with additional training, union rights, cooperation from civilians, and higher salaries. At the January 25, 26 symposium, Mechichi laid out what his ministry has done so far to solve the problem.

“The ministry has changed,” he said. “Enforcing the law while respecting the liberties of the people – that’s not just a slogan.”

Mechichi listed the changes that have been made since the revolution: the police budget is 50 percent higher, officer schools include 30 hours of human rights training, officer salaries are 70 Tunisian dinars (~$45) higher, and sanctions have been imposed on those who committed torture, although he did not specify what the sanctions include. Mechichi also said that progress is being made in relations between the government and police unions.

Mechichi has a history of working for human rights. He is a member of Amnesty International, treasurer of the LTDH for the town of Jendouba, and founder of the Organization for the Struggle Against Torture. However, he quickly defended the police when challenged by the moderator of Friday’s opening session.

“We should be a little bite more positive,” he said. “We really want to work to strengthen the rights of the police… they are very difficult conditions in which police officers are working.”

He also said that protesters who set fire to police stations are negatively impacting attempts to reform the police.

“People should understand that they should help the police [to facilitate reform],” he said.

Many audience members were disappointed by Mechichi’s comments and the government’s current approach to reform.

“Impunity does encourage police violence,” said Wael Karrafi, 22, who lost a leg due to police gunfire during the revolution in the town of El Kef.

“The criminal is still ruling in the Interior Ministry,” he said to Mechichi, referring to the fact that the names of those responsible for firing on protesters during the revolution have not been released. “If you want people’s trust and confidence, you must disclose [their] identity.”

Another audience member, who gave his name as Mohammed and said that he was beaten by police during the April 9, 2012 demonstrations, also expressed his dismay.

“This conference should be dedicated to me as a citizen before the police,” he said. “Mister minister, you did not convince me today. What you are saying is very dangerous.”

Another panelist, Lazhar Akremi, was even more supportive of the police. Akremi was a journalist for 25 years during the rule of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, when the press had no freedom to criticize the government. He served in the Interior Ministry during the transitional government of Beji Caid Essebsi, and was one of the people responsible for publishing the “White Book,” which documented corruption.

“We need psychological help. Police are scared. That’s why they don’t work in the appropriate legal framework. They need appropriate tools to work, appropriate training, infrastructure and arms,” he said.

When one audience member asked whether the Interior Ministry archives had been destroyed, Akremi lashed out.

“People who say the archives were destroyed [without the evidence to prove it] should be brought to justice,” he said, accusing such people of “spreading rumors, violating the privacy of others,” and acting “like children playing.”

On the other end of the spectrum at the opening panel of the symposium was Moussa, the president of the LTDH. He said that he joined the panel because Mechichi was a friend of his, and one of the few people in the government who picks up his phone calls. However, he too was disappointed with the pace of and approach to reform.

“We want to monitor detention centers. We haven’t been able to do so,” he said.

Moussa also noted that he was disappointed that adherence to international human rights conventions were not enshrined in the current draft of the constitution.

Analysis

Should police reform be separated from the issue of justice, i.e. public punishment for officers guilty of murder, torture, brutality etc.?

In some ways, the separation makes sense. Oppressing/suppressing opposition was one of the roles of the police force during the Ben Ali era. To punish individual officers for abuses that were not only rampant throughout, but integral to the maintenance of the old system, would create scapegoats. If justice is to be carried out in this fashion, it would require the entire cleansing of the security forces. Tunisia would then no longer need to reform the police force, but create an entirely new force.

However, there is a very practical reason why the government is avoiding publicly bringing some police to justice. Tunisia’s economy is still in dire straits, with unemployment close to 20 percent nationally and weak growth. A major component of Tunisia’s economy is the tourism sector, which employs about 1 in 5 people directly or indirectly. Tourism is a sector particularly sensitive to security. Any disruption to security would greatly harm Tunisia’s efforts to improve its economy. Given that economic complaints were key to the revolution, there will be a political cost to any party that does not improve the economy, or that presides over a weakening of the economy.

Problems of security have high visibility at the moment in Tunisia, as evidenced by the attacks on the US embassy in Tunis in September, the emergence of violent political groups, and the continuing destruction of shrines. If the police forces feel threatened by overly zealous reform that includes punishment for its members, they can take retribution by going on strike and ignoring these problems. The former interim Prime Minister, Beji Caid Essebsi, got into some hot water when he criticized the police and tried to ban them from forming unions in September 2011. Others within the government have hinted that they do not have full control over the police, and that old networks within the security forces are working to prevent their members from facing judgment.

The government seems to be taking the safe path while attempting to create a better policeman by treating its police better. After all, it is difficult to create a professional force when salaries are low and training is inadequate. However, Wael Karrafi, who lost a leg to police violence in the revolution, makes the most compelling point for linking justice to police reform: “Impunity does encourage police violence.”

---

[1] Figure cited by Lazhar Akremi, assigned as delegate minister to the Tunisian Ministry of Interior during the transitional government led by Beji Caid Essebsi

Lions of Libya

One family’s story from the city that broke Gadhafi’s back

Misrata, Libya

Stone and concrete lie folded like paper in downtown Misrata. Bullets and mortars and rockets have left abstract patterns of craters and soot. Sheets of metal bend like crumpled flower petals. This is where nearly 30,000 Gadhafi loyalists, many of them highly trained and extremely well armed, came to crush what had begun as a peaceful revolution.

“The stench of bodies was unbearable,” Abdulhadi al Gaid, a Misratan now living in Tripoli, says. “I didn’t think that it could ever look like a normal city again.”

 

For many months after the revolution, Misratans would not let other Libyans into their town unless they could prove their family ties to the city, partly out of security, partly out of pride. At a checkpoint near the city, at the town of Dafniya, al Gaid chats with a guard. A quick listing of family names brings smiles of recognition to both their faces and access to the town.

This stretch of highway was one of the most important fronts in the war - and one of the bloodiest. After successfully liberating Misrata, locals pushed west to link the liberated eastern part of the country with the still occupied western region, where the capital Tripoli lies. This is the road where foreign guns and artillery eventually replaced home-made weapons-systems to turn the tide of battle in favor of the revolutionaries. This is the road from where images of fighting were broadcast across the world. This is the road where one of Abdulhadi’s cousins was killed.

Rows of Gadhafi's destroyed tanks line the side of the Misrata-Tripoli highway.

But before all that, it took ordinary citizens with no fighting experience to liberate their coastal city.

“I had never seen a gun in my life except in the holsters of policemen,” says Mohammed ben Taher, 23, who fought to liberate the city and has the scars to prove it.

Sitting on the carpeted floor of his family’s living room, with the AC and lights phasing in and out along with the city’s electrical grid, Mohammad shows his wounds. He has a splotchy, pale scar under his left arm about the size of a soda can - his first injury that required hospitalization. He was transported to Izmir, Turkey to receive treatment before managing to hitch a ride back to Misrata on a fishing boat to resume fighting.

Mohammed has dozens of scars, a giant dimple in his right tricep where muscle once existed, and two straight streaks, as wide as a ruler, across his chest. His chest wound was inflicted when a 23-and-half millimeter anti-air craft bullet landed near him and two of his fellow fighters. The bullet’s impact sent shrapnel into Mohammed, some of which remains in his neck, jaw, and cheek. The medical reports from his hospital stay in Tunisia tell him that his heart stopped twice, that he required artificial breathing, and that he had serious internal bleeding near his heart and lungs – little of which he remembers after waking up from a twelve-day coma.

He still has shrapnel in his back from another battle, which makes it difficult for him to sleep lying down. When he does manage to fall asleep these days, it is usually in a chair.

But Mohammed was the lucky one.

The Libyan Insurance Building, looms above downtown Misrata. Its white walls are now broken and blackened from gunfire. However, for weeks on end in the spring of 2011, Gadhafi’s snipers destroyed the building’s stairs to cut off access, and used the roof to pick off countless revolutionaries. In an alleyway not far from the building, Hisham ben Taher, Mohammed’s older brother, was shot and killed on March 6.

A photo of the Libyan National Insurance Building in downtown Misrata

Mohammed and the younger of his two older sisters, Halima, show me a video on their iPad of Hisham’s last moments. The footage shows Hisham sprawled in the middle of the street as two young men attend to another wounded man lying several feet from Hisham. The men wait for the gunfire to stop so they can retrieve the older ben Taher. Within two weeks, both men would be dead.

Halima and her older sister, Ilham, who sits in another corner of the room, shed silent tears before continuing their story.

“It’s strange,” says Halima, as Mohammed retreats back into silence, his head twitching, his tongue flicking inside his cheek, his shoulders jerking up from time to time. “We lived in a war, but we did not live in fear. We used to see the Palestinians before the war living, eating, drinking, marrying – we used to ask ‘how can they live?’ Then it happened to us.”

Ilham nods in agreement. Why weren’t they afraid?

“We knew that when they are here, the boys won’t let us get hurt,” says Halima.

As Ramadan ben Taher, the father of the family, quietly brings coffee and fruit to offer his guests, the youngest son, Abdurrahman, sits sheepishly near Ilham. His sisters did not allow Abdurrahman, now aged 17 but only 16 during the war, to fight alongside his brothers. One day he ventured outside the confines of the family’s besieged basement to join his brothers only to have his foot shattered by a stray bullet. Trapped by gunfire, he lay on his own street for hours, losing consciousness twice before neighbors rescued him.

On the iPad, Halima and Mohammed show photos of their house’s gray, destroyed façade, unrecognizable from the now rebuilt house surrounded by greenery. On March 13, five days after Gadhafi forces stormed the city, the girls, Abdurrahman and their mother fled to a relative’s house, using small openings in backyard walls to navigate across the neighborhood’s alleys.

The family spent five days in Halima’s uncle’s basement, along with 103 other people.

Asked about the conditions there, Halima chuckled. “The kids wanted warm bread. We only had old bread.”

Navigating back to normality

Now that the war is over, Halima has returned to teaching primary school. Ilham has returned to teaching the Quran at the local mosque. Abdurrahman has begun his first year of university in the faculty of engineering, and their father, a retired businessman, beams with pride.

Everyone seems to have returned to normal except for Mohammed. He says he doesn’t believe in school, and will not return. Asked if he is working, he replies no, prompting a patient, almost gentle silence as the family smiles lovingly in his direction. Ramadan quietly mentions that he would like to see his son go back to school, but looks pleased when Mohammed says he would like to start his own business someday.

The family has just voted in Libya’s first multi-party election since 1952, proudly brandishing their henna-stained fingers. They say they have all voted for Mahmoud Jibril’s National Forces Alliance, a non-Islamist coalition that has shirked ideological debate and focused instead on the practical steps needed to rebuild the country.

“What Mahmoud Jibril says is what we dream,” says Halima.

However, Mohammed’s scarred hands remain unstained.

“I don’t want to give my vote to anyone. There are still too many problems,” he says. “When Gadhafi was alive, we were still one people. Now people have changed.”

Mohammed says he has unsuccessfully applied to the local medical board four times for a grant to be treated outside of Libya. Apart from medical treatment for himself, he says he wants the country to have a better education system, solid infrastructure, rule of law and the removal of guns from the streets.

“Of course I have hope, but things will be slow,” he says, conceding that he would prefer to move to the United States.

Asked why he went out to fight in the first place, he responds immediately with only one word.

“Freedom.”

This photo, taken days after Libya's July, 7, 2012 elections, shows a wall in downtown Misrata covered in revolutionary graffiti.

Libya's New Politicians Resist Labels

Libyans celebrate election day on Omar Mukthar Avenue in downtown Tripoli, Libya on July, 7, 2012.

Tripoli, Libya

Sitting in his garden in the Tripoli suburb of Ain Zara five days after the July, 7 elections, surrounded by a circle of friends and family chatting quietly, Abdelnasser Siklani watched his TV screen as Libya’s Higher National Election Commission announced results. Siklani, an independent candidate for the new General National Congress, had just heard the news that he had won a seat, but was waiting to hear it confirmed on televised broadcast.

Suddenly the results for the district, which has two seats in the new congress, appeared on screen. Siklani rushed up to the screen and held his finger over his name. He had indeed come in second place, ahead of the next candidate by less than a hundred votes.

For Siklani, a businessman, this foray into politics is totally new.

“This is a special feeling you can’t get in business. This dream was always inside me, but now I can transfer my feelings and love of Libya through a program,” he says.

In the new Congress, only 80 out of 200 seats were reserved for political parties, with the rest left to individual candidates. This has made determining the political leaning of the new body difficult to identify, particularly in a country where there were no politics for 42 years under the rule of former dictator Moammer Gadhafi. While the non-Islamist National Forces Alliance, or NFA, of former interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril, has performed exceedingly well in these elections, other parties have said that they intend to tip the balance by attracting independent congressmen to their cause.

According to Siklani, he has already been contacted by five, different political parties seeking his support, with one phone call coming only minutes after his victory.

“All parties are calling me to get me to join, but I will remain independent,” he says.

Siklani says he is skeptical of parties that were formed too quickly.

“I don’t rely on theories or ideas. When I see something in practice that works, I will go to that,” he says.

Siklani says his skepticism of the political parties comes from the lessons he learned when he spent 7 years in Gadhafi’s Abu Slim prison. Siklani was jailed twice for plotting to assassinate Moammer Gadhafi. The first time came, in 1980, when he was a pilot stationed at an airbase in Sirte. Noticing that Gadhafi only traveled with a dozen-car escort in this Gadhafi-friendly town, rather than the normal 100 in Tripoli, he hatched a plan with one co-conspirator. Siklani’s confidante let the plan slip to a third party. Siklani was arrested, but managed to convince the jailers that his partner was simply trying to climb up the ladder of success by inventing traitors.

The second time Siklani plotted to kill Gadhafi was in 1982 in Benghazi, and this time he was caught.

Siklani’s brother, Abdelrazek, celebrating tonight in Ain Zara, recounts looking for his jailed brother for three years.

“I lied about my age so I could get a license and drove house to house around Tripoli to try to get information and clearance [to see Abdelnasser],” he says, noting that the family had no idea whether he was alive or not.

Abdelrazek and his mother were finally granted permission to see Abdelnasser in prison in 1985.

“I think the guys sitting around him tortured him. He couldn’t even walk, his legs were blue,” Abdelrazek says.

“Your mom had to watch it,” Abdelnasser interrupts, pointing out that he had to pretend he was in better condition than he actually was so as not to worry his mother.

The Siklani story, like thousands of others in this city, gives a clue as to how external political influences, like Islamism, have failed to mold the political landscape of this fiercely independent country.

“We learned enough from Gadhafi that no one will cheat us in the future, even the Libyan parties,” he says.

This attitude may help to explain how the NFA, which has thus far shirked ideological labels, managed to secure a sweeping victory. Following the elections, NFA head Jibril gave a press conference specifically to reject the labels ascribed to his coalition by the media.

“Some media channels, Arab and non-Arab, started referring to the National Forces Alliance as liberal and secular. That’s not true. This alliance is open and it is composed of all political mixtures of Libyans,” he said. “This alliance is an alliance of the national forces. It has no relationship to any ideology.”

He also went on to reject the labels of ‘leftist,’ and ‘Islamist.’

According to the NFA’s General Secretary, Doctor Faisal Krekshi, the NFA learned well the lessons of Tunisia and Egypt. He noted that in Tunisia’s first democratic elections in October of last year, the Islamist Ennahda party won less of the vote-total than all the non-Islamist parties combined, but took power because the others remained divided. Learning from that experience, Krekshi says that Jibril toured 30 cities in November and December, talking with local political groups and non-governmental organizations to build the NFA’s current 55-party coalition.

Beyond grassroots coalition building, Krekshi says the NFA has beaten Islamists by taking debate to a higher level.

“We should provide for the basic needs of people, then we can talk about politics. We feel that it is more important to build the future principles of Libya rather than debate about secular or Muslims or stupidity like that,” he says. “We never go into a level where debate is so cheap. We prefer that debate will be about what you can offer and provide as a program, schedule, timetable and tools. But debating that you are Muslims, non-Muslims; you are secular, they are not secular; you drink, you don’t drink; you pray, you don’t pray – that’s not the way to build a country.”

More than that, Krekshi says that talking about religion as a political matter, in a country where nearly everyone is Muslim, is moot.

“This is a 100% Muslim country. You cannot speak about secularism. It’s like speaking about secularism inside the Vatican. That’s crazy,” he says.

The NFA has instead put forward basic guidelines for fixing Libya’s security challenges and preempting calls for federalism by advocating a policy of decentralization. Siklani, who says he is similarly opposed to ideological debates for now, says his first priority as a newly elected official is to solve Libya’s fragmented security apparatus.

“We cannot talk about politics while people have no electricity, have no clean water, when health services are not provided, when you have no laws, or telecommunications. Those are essential needs for your people. You should provide, and then you can talk about politics,” Krekshi says.

In Libya, Ink-stained Hands Pen a New Chapter

A mother (C), her daughter (L), and their family friend wait in line to enter the voting booths at the Ali Oureyeth High School in Tripoli, Libya on July, 7, 2012.

The following is an excerpt from my latest piece in Egypt Independent on Libya's historic elections:

Into a sun-washed courtyard, yards away from a street full of blaring car horns and waving flags, Laila Gurgi and her husband Mohammad al Taboli step out of the Ali Oureyeth High School. The couple has just voted for the first time in their lives, and they are smiling.

“It is difficult to explain how we are feeling,” she said. “It’s like a dream. Today we touched the sky.”

A stranger, Khansaa al-Obeydi, approaches to congratulate the couple on voting.

“We suffered a lot. Today we forgot everything except our martyrs,” al-Obeydi says.

Saturday marks Libya’s first multi-party election since February 1952. There are over 2000 candidates vying for 200 seats in a new temporary assembly tasked with picking a cabinet and appointing a new prime minister. There are lingering security concerns around the country, and many worry that some groups pushing for greater autonomy in the eastern region of Cyrenaica will destabilize a country recovering from a bloody revolution. However, the residents of Tripoli today downplayed these threats and took to the streets en masse, celebrating what many see as “victory day.”

Election volunteers display their henna-stained fingers after voting at the 'Turkish-Mosque' primary school and voting center in Souk Al Jouma neighborhood of Tripoli, Libya, on July, 7, 2012.

Libyan Elections: A historical note

Reading Libya: The Struggle for Survival, Geoff Simons' (at times very biased) historical account of Libya, I came across a passage about Libya's 1952 elections:

Political parties contended for power in the general election of February 1952, after which they were dissolved and banned. Two opposing tendencies had come into conflict: the Istiqlal [Independence] party under Salim al-Muntasser, linked to business and the British military administration; and Bashir Bey Sadawi's National Congress Party, leaning towards the Arab League. The Congress Party won all the seats in Tripoli, but lost in the rest of the country, a result that confounded its expectations and led to claims that the government had rigged the ballot. As soon as the results were announced Congress supporters invaded the government buildings, cut telephone wires, and blocked transport. The government arrested scores of demonstrators, banned the Congress Party, and banished Sadawi to Egypt. The fledgling multi-party politics of independent Libya had collapsed at the first test, and it was destined not to return: factions continued to operate on a clandestine basis but healthy political contention was at an end.

Hopefully history will not repeat itself, and the upcoming elections on July 7th will be the first step to a lively, but peaceful, representative political system.