Libyan parliament moves its seat to a Greek ferry

[Famous Mortimer]

I was under the impress that both parliaments were elected. That both were originally one parliament. Also that the Islamist faction was the larger one.

[Famous Mortimer]

Huh.

Apparently this new non-Islamist parliament only came into being about 2 weeks ago.

The Islamist parliament is the old one that was elected right after the revolution but has refused to step down.

That's why I was confused. The Islamist parliament used to be the official parliament. In fact, it was the Islamist parliament that elected the Prime Minister of the non-Islamist government. Still following?

This is a pretty big development. Previously Hafter was outside the government. Now all the forces opposed to Hafter have left and set up their own government. It sounds like it's more confusing but actually in a way things are becoming much more polarized and simple.

[Famous Mortimer]

Also, what's happening with the Constituent Assembly that was elected earlier this year?

If you take them into account, Libya may have 3 parliaments at this point.

[Famous Mortimer]

I did say "used" to be the official parliament.

Although if one believes democracy is the most important thing above all else, I would question why Islamists did so poorly in the most recent elections. I would question how legitimate the new official parliament is and how legitimate an election held in the middle of a civil war can be.

Of course, I personally don't give a crap about democracy. It is a means to an end.

Haftar for Revolutionary Leader for Life.

[Famous Mortimer]

Like I said, if you care about democracy, you can't back a parliament that was elected with 18% turnout in the middle of an armed conflict.

The Islamist parliament was elected with 60% turnout at a time when the country was relatively peaceful. That was less than 4 years ago. Extending their term seems reasonable.

[Famous Mortimer]

The UAE has interestingly been accused of helping the non islamist faction.

I'm very confused about who is who and who is helping who right now, I haven't had time to really read about in detail. I was under the impression the "Islamists" were Salafists mainly from Misrata. But is the Muslim Brotherhood also involved in the fighting? Have they really taken control over Tripoli and  Benghazi? Whatever happened to Haftar and his "Karama" operation? Is this parliament in Tobruk the actual parliament? Who controls what?

It's also confusing because not all branches of the Ikhwan - the Muslim Brotherhood- are the same, which is often overlooked. One such overlook-er, to a certain extent, would have been the Saudis, which led them to support the secularist el-Sisi over the theoretically ideologically closer Ikhwan. But the Saudi Ikhwan, to the extent of my knowledge, is a considerably more radical outfit- who consider the Saudis and their Wahabism too lenient and resented their cooperation with the US during the Gulf War (the same thing that led bin Laden to break with the Saudis- than the Egyptian Ikhwan , which (during times when was not banned), stuck mainly to charity work and supported tolerance of Copts.

That's not to say Morsi was some sort of moderate, but his problems had to do more with incompetence (appointing a terrorist who targeted tourists Governor of the tourist hub of Luxor, for example) and a fair amount of deliberate conspiracy (utility cuts and disappeared police seemingly at random) rather than his radicalism. So the question here is- what is the Libyan Ikhwan like? Are they like their Saudi or Palestinian (aka Hamas) counterparts, or are they more tolerant accommodationists like their Egyptian or Tunisian counterparts, that could conceivably be involved in the governing process? I need to read more about this, because it's all very confusing right now.

But again I'm rather shocked that this has all but entirely fallen under the radar of most people and news agencies. I feel like I now know what Beet feels like when he talks about Ebola and no one seems bothered.

I still feel like my idea from a few weeks back would be a possible solution, but I'd imagine it's a bit less viable today than it was then:

This Haftar guy would seem better if he wasn't so bad at hiding his ambitions to become a Libyan el-Sisi. Fighting Islamists is a good thing, but his open hostility to the Muslim Brotherhood seems more a desire to eliminate potential political rivals rather than radical Islamism; the real and active threat are the Salafists. And in that context his desire to seek the aid of Saudi Arabia seems counterproductive.

What should happen is that someone with sufficient legitimacy (yes, I am imagining the Sanussis here) should step in between the MB and the Karama-ists, and assume power by telling the two sides they are necessary to prevent the other from wiping them out. The 1951 constitution would be restored on a probationary basis pending revision. The elected assembly should remain for the time being.

The militias should be de-authorised and re-shuffled into regular units of the standing army. Haftar should be given a promotion, feted, and then pensioned off; the officer corps should be filled mainly with pragmatic anti-Islamists. Martial law should be used to crack down on Salafists  and would-be troublemakers. A liberal should be appointed Prime Minister, someone along the lines of Ali Zeidan. Failing all else they could resort to Egyptian intervention, but that's bound to alarm the Muslim Brotherhood when their cooperation is needed.

When something resembling stability is restored to the country the political reform process should be resumed and quickly concluded; the federalist 1951 Constitution should be adopted with a few changes here and there. It would be better if most of the federal powers were invested in the governorates of 1963 rather than the three provinces which would be largely ceremonial; they had proved unwieldy and too polarising. The role of religion in governance should be broadly similar to that in Morocco, with Sharia remaining primarily in the realm of family law.

I get the impression that the Muslim Brotherhood, and more radical Islamist elements, are markedly less popular in Libya than in Egypt, after all they are considered to have suffered considerable losses in the recent elections. The Muslim Brotherhood should thus be told that must disclaim political activity, and its affiliated parties should take after the AK Party and adopt "conservative democracy" rather than Islamism. The appointed Senate should be used as a bulwark of the sort of pragmatic politics that the government aims to foster. Meanwhile Salafism should continue to be untolerated, and Saudi influences rejected, and the temperance of the Sanussiyah order used to encourage moderate Islam.

Democracy is useful at times, as it stops people from shooting at each other during political disputes, not to mention that it allows for bad leaders to be thrown out; that being said I'd take a good dictator over a good democrat every day of the week. The problem with a sudden democratisation is that it, for the most part, lacks institutional support and can very easily be swept away. Often what this translates into is that people perceive that a democratic opening is little more than a fleeting opportunity for one faction to seize complete control of the state, and the benefits thereof, to the complete exclusion of any others, which results in wide-scale violence over what is seen as a winner-takes-all-and-permanently-so contest. Such occurrences have been common, in Africa since the late 1980s- such as in Congo-Brazza in 1997, Cote d'Ivoire in 2000, Kenya in 2007, and Cote d'Ivoire again in 2011. Indeed I'd say that peacefully contested and truly competitive elections are have been the exceptions rather than the norm and only seem to happen in a few countries (Senegal since 2000, Ghana since 1992, and a handful of others). Morsi's election and tenure could, to a degree, be considered something fitting that description as well.

What has happened in Libya seems to be along those lines, between "Islamists" and liberals/nationalists, perhaps even trumping the regional affiliations that we thought would be the fault lines, although there seems to be a certain overlap between them- the "Islamists" seem to mainly be coming from Tripolitania (?) while the liberals/nationalists seem to primarily hail from Cyrenaica (?).  Again, I'm not really sure.

The Islamist parliament is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood. Salafists do control a lot of land. No super strong link between the two but most people are just assuming there is or will be. The secular parliament surely assumes so.

As I said, the Muslim Brotherhood parliament used to be the parliament of the official government. Halftar was fighting the Muslim Brotherhood but trying to stay on good terms with the secularists in the government. The official state institutions were filled with both opponents and supporters of Haftar. Then this new mostly secular parliament was sworn in. The Muslim Brotherhood members and the other Islamists broke away and are trying to keep the old parliament running.

So basically everyone mildly Islamist just pulled out of the official government (partially because they couldn't get their way, partially because it's a joke) and left the Haftarists in control of the state institutions.

At least that's my understanding.

[Famous Mortimer]

It's kind of like Somalia in reverse actually.

In Somalia, the government won by basically turning over power to the moderate wing of the Islamist movement so they could stop the more radical wing.

In Libya, the government is losing and the moderate wing of the Islamist movement has left to form a de facto alliance with the radical wing.