Former Nigerian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi has said Libya at the moment does not need a democratic system, but rather a system that would allow for stability and development.
Akinyemi, an eminent professor of International Relations also expressed his doubts on the success of the scheduled December 24 presidential election. The former minister said he doubts if the election will hold, further saying that should the election hold, it might not be the solution to the instability rocking the country.
Libya, a country located in the northern part of Africa is set to hold its presidential election to elect a new president years after former ruler Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and killed during the civil war that rocked the country in 2011.
In a move to turn the page of the country, an interim unity government inaugurated in March 2021 announced the decision to hold the country’s presidential election in December 2021.
On November 14, 2021, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Gaddafi announced his intention to contest in the presidential election of December 24.
His ambition was however cut short after a decision of the High National Election Commission (HNEC) which disqualified him from contesting over being wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes.
However, Akinyemi in his reaction rejected the decision of the electoral commission. The former minister, in his opinion said the Libyan authorities should instead opt for an alliance of all the factional leaders in the country and put them in power.
This according to him will help the country get the needed political stability.
He said this during an interview session on ‘thruMY eyes’, an online programme that runs commentary on various international events, monitored by The New Diplomat.
In his words: “The western media often then gets it all wrong. ‘Oh this one has something in his past’, ‘this one the ICC has been looking for him’, ‘that one the world court has been looking for him’, common, in what country do you really have people with clean hands?. … (They) should have an alliance of all these factional leaders and let them rule the country and gradually evolve a system where they will have stability.
“Stability and development are what Libya needs now, not democracy. I’m sorry to say this, not democracy. Democracy is not going to be workable in any case, just as it is not workable in Iraq, it was not workable in Afghanistan where it was 419 elections that they kept on patching together until they couldn’t even agree on how to fight the Taliban. This is what’s going to happen in Libya.”
