Libya Elections: Liberal Alliance Surging in Initial Results
Mahmoud Jebril (Photo: BBC)
The preliminary results in Libya’s national assembly election suggest a liberal alliance headed by Western-educated economist Mahmoud Jebril is edging out more conservative Islamist parties.
It’s been a pretty consensual campaign, some would even say dull. In Tunisia, you had a clear divide between the secularists and the Islamists. In the Libyan campaign you had no such divide.”
This weekend, Jebril called on all of Libya’s political parties to “come all together in one coalition, under one banner… to reach a compromise, a consensus on which the constitution can be drafted and the new government can be composed.”
Jebril has criticized the media’s use of the label “liberal” to describe his coalition, and calls his alliance inclusive rather than ideological. It’s a sign the competing parties may be drawing closer together.
The post-campaign looks pretty much like the campaign looked like, which is the parties are competing but without any clear political fault lines between them.
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