Libya readies for 1st post-Qaddafi polls; helicopter with vote material attacked

Calls for a boycott and other unrest on the eve of Libya’s first vote since the overthrow of longtime Muammar Qaddafi raised fears of election violence, even as campaigning came to an end Friday for a contest seen as a milestone on the country’s rocky path toward democracy.

A helicopter carrying voting material for Saturday’s election in Libya made a forced landing near the eastern town of Benghazi on Friday after being struck by anti-aircraft fire in an attack which killed one person on board, a local official said.

It was the latest attempt to derail elections in a region where many seek more autonomy and argue they will be under-represented in a new assembly that will name a prime minister and pave the way for full parliamentary polls next year.

“We were preparing to receive the voting material as it arrived on a helicopter from Tripoli but it was hit and one man died,” Ahmed Abdul Malik, an employee at the local branch of the election commission told Reuters.

Hamed al-Hassi, head of the military council for the Cyrenaica region, confirmed the incident but said the identity of the attackers was not immediately known.

The Saturday election of a 200-member transitional parliament caps a messy nine-month transition after a ruinous 2011 civil war that ended in October with the death of Qaddafi, whose four-decade rule left the country deeply divided along regional, tribal and ideological lines.

The parliament will elect a new transitional government to replace the one appointed by the National Transitional Council that led the rebel side during the eight-month war and held power in its aftermath.

Many in Libya’s oil-rich east feel slighted by the NTC-issued election laws, purportedly based on population, that allocate their region less than a third of the parliamentary seats, with the rest going to the western region that includes Tripoli and the sparsely-settled desert south.

On Friday, Armed men have forced the closure of five oil facilities in eastern Libya in protest over not being granted more seats in the elections.

“We have shut al-Sedra, Haruj, Zuwaytina, Brega and al-Hariga in protest over the distribution of seats in the (incoming) congress,” protest leader Ibrahim al-Jadhran told AFP.

Jadhran said he heads the Wadi Ahmar movement which wants seats in the 200-member General National Congress due to be elected on Saturday evenly split along regional lines.

Instead the authorities, citing demographic considerations, have given 100 seats to the western region of Tripolitania, 60 to the eastern region of Cyrenaica, and 40 to Fezzan in the south.

“We will continue our protests until Saturday night. If the authorities do not reallocate seats, we will consider other measures,” Jadhran said without elaborating.

In what it called an attempt to defuse east-west tensions, the NTC decreed on Thursday that the new parliament will not be responsible for naming the panel that will draft a new constitution. Instead, the drafters will be directly elected by the public in a separate vote at a later date, The Associated Press reported.

But this has not satisfied some in the east, who press for a boycott.

“We don’t want Tripoli to rule all of Libya,” said Fadallah Haroun, a former rebel commander in the east’s regional capital Benghazi.

Earlier this week, ex-rebel fighters and other angry protesters in Benghazi and in the nearby town of Ajdabiya attacked elections offices, setting fire to ballot papers and other voting materials.

Haroun said boycott supporters would take to the streets on election day to “prevent people from voting, because this is a vote that serves those who stole the revolution from us.” He said they would not take up arms but when asked how they would stop voters, he said: “We will see tomorrow.”

Many in the west are equally dissatisfied with the decree, saying it will undercut the authority of the new parliament.

“The National Transitional Council acts like a rooster with its head cut off,” said Yasser al-Bashti, a candidate with the liberal Free Libyans Party. “They want to weaken the new parliament after their failures over the past months.”

The vote also will be a test of the strength of Islamist parties, which have gained influence in Libya and other nations following the ouster of authoritarian regimes run by strongmen like Qaddafi and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. Groups vying for power range from the politically savvy Muslim Brotherhood to the ultraconservative Salafis and former jihadists.

Late Thursday, just before a 24-hour pre-vote ban on campaigning went into effect, supporters of the Justice and Construction party co-founded by the Muslim Brotherhood marched through the streets of Tripoli carrying the party’s flags. The Alliance of National Forces, led by secular-leaning former premier Mahmoud Jibril, paraded in cars plastered with party posters. The National Front, which descends from a Qaddafi-era opposition movement, lit the sky over the capital with fireworks.

A day earlier, the former rebel commander and former jihadist Abdul-Hakim Belhaj, who co-founded the Homeland or al-Watan party, spoke to hundreds of supporters at the heart of Tripoli, endorsing democracy that will serve Sharia (Islamic law).

Those four parties are seen as front-runners in this highly unpredictable race.

Libyan observers however say that voters are likely to cast ballots based on personalities whom they know, rather than ideology. In this conservative, almost entirely Muslim country, nearly all politicians accord Sharia a role in the constitution.

The NTC also decreed Thursday that the new constitution will definitely give a role to Sharia, a move that appeared intended at preventing parties from turning the race to an Islamist-versus-secular contest.

Some 2.8 million voters, out of more than three million eligible, have registered for the polls. New parliamentary elections are to be held in 2013, after the constitution is drafted and approved in a referendum.

Observers expect that no party is likely to win an outright majority and the shape of the final government will likely depend on post-election alliances.

“We might see the Justice and Construction party striking alliance with Jibril’s party or we might see all Islamists forming one bloc in parliament,” said Mohammed Bu-Sedr, a political prisoner during the Gadhafi era who now serves as adviser to the NTC’s head and is running as an independent candidate in Benghazi.