TRIPOLI —
Libyans angered by rising prices, chronic power cuts and political deadlock
planned further demonstrations Monday after a night of angry protests across
the capital.
اضافة اعلان
Masked youths
set alight car tires and blocked roads including a major coastal highway
between central
Tripoli and its western suburbs, but security forces did not
intervene.
Videos carried
by local media also showed demonstrations in Beni Walid and the port city of
Misrata.
A youth movement
calling itself “Beltress” said further protests were planned in Tripoli’s
Martyr’s Square at 4pm local time.
The movement
demands elections and the dissolution of both the country’s rival governments
and their two houses of parliament.
Public anger has
been fuelled by power cuts that often last 18 hours amid soaring summer
temperatures, despite Libya sitting on Africa’s largest oil reserves.
The vast country
has been mired in political unrest and armed violence since a 2011 NATO-backed
uprising toppled and killed dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
On Friday night,
protesters stormed the seat of the House of Representatives in the eastern city
of Tobruk, ransacking its offices and torching part of the building.
In both Tripoli
and the main eastern city of
Benghazi, the cradle of the 2011 uprising,
thousands took to the streets to chants of “We want the lights to work”.
Some brandished
the green flags of the former Gaddafi regime.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for calm, but UN-mediated talks
in Geneva last week aimed at breaking the stalemate between rival Libyan
institutions failed to resolve key differences.
Presidential and
parliamentary elections, originally set for last December, were meant to cap a
UN-led peace process following the end of the last major round of violence in
2020.
But voting never
took place due to several contentious candidacies and deep disagreements over
the polls’ legal basis between the rival power centers in east and west.
The crisis
deepened this year as parliament, elected in 2014 and backed by eastern
strongman Khalifa Haftar, appointed a new government to replace that of interim
leader Abdelhamid Dbeibah.
He has refused
to cede power except to an elected administration.
On top of the
political deadlock, Libyans’ living standards have been hit hard by price hikes
on food imports due to the war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile
supporters of the rival administration of former interior minister
Fathi Bashagha have shut down several oil facilities since April as leverage in his
power struggle with Dbeibah.
Libya expert
Jalel Harchaoui told AFP that “kleptocracy and systematic corruption” were rife
in both eastern and western Libya.
For normal Libyans
however, the year “has been extremely painful” because the country “imports
almost all its food and the Ukraine war has hit consumer prices”, Harchaoui
said.
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
