Milestone on a bumpy road

Ilona Gerbakher reports:

Wednesday’s Atlantic Council discussion on the results of the Libyan election veered between exuberance and caution.

Gregory Kehalia, from the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) opened on a hopeful note.  Libyans are full of pride, motivation and joy.  The media has called July 7 “exceptional.” Not every Libyan has turned into a democrat, as attacks on polling places in Ajdabiya demonstrate, but the elections did not turn into the kind of bloodbath that some were expecting. Security was good.  By Tuesday 100% of polling places had opened. A 63% turnout is excellent for a first election and a relatively uneducated population. From the point of view of an electoral technician, the elections themselves are–against all odds–an unquestionable success. It is still too early to know the official election results, and we cannot yet know if Libya will be an exception to the recent string of Islamist victories in the region. But the election is a major new milestone for Arab democracies in the Middle East, even if the road is “still littered with problems.”

Fadel Laman of the American Libyan Council illuminated some of these problems.  He was critical of the pre-election campaign. Despite very high turnout, particularly for women, most Libyans were not well educated about their candidates. Until the day before the election, Libyans were unsure of whom to vote for, or did not understand that receiving a registration card was not the same as casting a vote. A thirteen-day campaigning period was too brief for people to understand much about the political parties or their agendas. Most Libyans voted for people they knew, or felt they knew, or felt they trusted, such as Mahmoud Jibril.

The big bump in the road is governance. Regardless of who wins the popular vote, it is unlikely that any one person or party will have an absolute majority. Assuming a Jibril victory, which early polls seem to indicate, will he be able to create and maintain a ruling coalition? What will be done about the militias? How will the place of Shari’a law be decided?  The “morning after,” when the election winners come to power, Libya will still be facing the same problems and challenges.  Whether 200 newly minted representatives can unite to overcome these is uncertain.

Dr. Esam Omeigh, director of the Libyan Emergency Taskforce, was also more concerned with the aftermath of the elections than with the elections themselves. Yes, they were historic, but now the question is whether the new National Assembly can tackle Libya’s to-do list? Can the new representatives remain coherent and create a coalition around which bigger alliances can be constructed? It’s a difficult question, which leaves room for worry. Neither the Justice and Development Party nor the National Forces Alliance will have a real majority.  It is the large block of independents who will be the real movers and shakers in the parliament. Regional power brokers, tribal alliances and some holdovers from the Gaddafi regime will plague the government with problems and divisions. How this will all play out, and how this will affect US interests in the region is impossible to control.

Libya represents a good vantage point for looking forward to what will become of the region. Observers of the Middle East (and US policy makers) should take a step back and give the fledgling democracy space to develop–it might allow us to project what a post-Arab Spring world will look like.