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This Briefing Note assesses the outcome of a UN-backed forum that took place in Geneva from 1-5 February and where Libyan delegates elected a new interim executive. It is the fourth in a series of regular updates on efforts to end Libya’s civil war.

Against All Odds, Libya's Peace Process Makes Substantial Progress

On 5 February, Libyan delegates attending UN-hosted political talks in Geneva nominated a new unified interim executive for their country, which has been split in two regions, each administered separately, since 2014. They chose eastern Libya's Mohamed Mnefi to head a new three-person Presidency Council and a businessman from Misrata in western Libya, Abdulhamid Dabaiba, as prime minister-designate. If confirmed, this executive would serve until elections in late 2021. The Mnefi-Dabaiba list won by a slim majority in a race with other heavyweights including the eastern parliament's speaker, Aghela Saleh, and the Tripoli government's interior minister, Fathi Bashaga. It was a significant accomplishment that during the marathon five-day proceedings, which were broadcast live on the internet and Libyan television, no controversy arose. The losing candidates conceded defeat. This outcome sets the right tone for returning to peaceful, healthy political competition in Libya after years of bellicose rhetoric and a fifteen-month war that ended in June 2020. To translate this preliminary result into a concrete step toward unifying a country, the nominees and the cabinet they propose must now pass a vote of confidence in the House of Representatives.

It will not be easy. One challenge is to bring together the House's members, who are split into one group based in Tobruk, eastern Libya, and another in the capital Tripoli. Another is for Dabaiba to propose a cabinet line-up that satisfies all constituencies. Negotiations are under way, but it will be taxing for the prime minister-designate to meet all the factions' demands even if he proceeds with the bloated cabinet of 30 ministers that he appears to be considering.

That said, parliamentary approval of the new cabinet is not impossible. The political atmosphere in Libya has improved significantly since 2015, when a similar attempt to win parliamentary backing for a UN-backed transitional authority failed. While at that time the main actors' attitudes were confrontational, today both camps have adopted a more conciliatory tone.

An Unexpected Outcome

When, in November 2020, the UN launched the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum, few expected it to reach agreement on a new interim government. It seemed destined for discord, as it comprised 74 delegates sent by the two rival assemblies in addition to several UN-handpicked independents representing a broad spectrum of the country's military, political and tribal factions. At first, progress was indeed stumbling. The forum laid out a roadmap to elections, but its members were deadlocked for over two months on how to select top state officials. Delegates and UN officials assumed that the forum would agree on a new executive by consensus (ijma), as members had done with the roadmap. This approach would have been in line with other UN-mediated peace talks, in which rival factions negotiate arrangements that are acceptable to all, but it would likely have been arduous and time-consuming.

Instead, the forum opted for something entirely different. To select the new executive, delegates agreed in late January to hold an election with two possible voting procedures: the first vote on prospective nominees was to take place on a regional (geographic) basis, and, if that failed (in the eventuality that none of the candidates reached the required 60 per cent endorsement), voting would then take place between joint tickets specifying the candidates for the prime minister's slot and three Presidency Council positions. These officials would jointly lead the country until general elections that have been scheduled for late 2021. Any Libyan who received endorsements from at least two forum members by a 28 January deadline could run for these positions. From 1-5 February, over 40 candidates presented themselves through video link to the forum members in Geneva. Libyans at home could also follow the proceedings, which were broadcast live. Although some Libyans outside the forum questioned the legitimacy of the UN-backed process, high-level politicians from across the spectrum and spanning the civil war's divide endorsed it de facto by joining the race.

Following a nail-biting four-day voting session, an unexpected result emerged. The region-based vote did not produce a winner, so voting followed the joint ticket system. Of four groups of candidates running in the joint ticket vote, delegates narrowed the lists down to two after a first round of voting. The forum then picked a winning slate on 5 February with 39 votes of 74. It comprised Dabaiba, a businessman with ties to the former Qadhafi regime, as prime minister-designate and Mnefi, from the east and a former Libyan ambassador to Greece, Musa Koni from the south and Abdullah al-Lafi from the west as Presidency Council members. By virtue of an implicit understanding that, if the prime minister is from western Libya -- Dabaiba is from Misrata in the west -- an easterner should head the Presidency Council, Mnefi is due to become the Council's president.

The result was a blow to supporters of the list defeated in the run-off, which included Bashaga and Saleh, who had formed an alliance of convenience that some foreign officials, especially in Paris and Cairo, had expected and may have quietly hoped to win. Dabaiba's victory was not so much an endorsement of his list (many Libyans are wary of his family name, which they associate with Qadhafi-era corruption) as a rejection of Bashaga and Saleh. Many delegates and their constituents were annoyed by the pair's evident confidence of prevailing. But they also had substantive concerns: Bashaga's anti-militia agenda engendered the opposition of powerful armed groups and politicians in Tripoli, who also rejected Saleh's support for Haftar's war in Tripoli. Haftar, for his part, considered Saleh, his nominal ally, unreliable.

Cautiously Positive Reactions to the New Interim Executive

In a great and unexpected display of political sportsmanship, all the losing candidates conceded defeat and congratulated the winners. Faiez Serraj, the current head of the Tripoli-based Presidency Council, also welcomed the result. These reactions are remarkable given the rancour and zero-sum mentality that often prevail in the Libyan political arena.