Abdul Hameed Dabaiba elected by LPDF as new Prime Minister for Libya, with Mohammad Menfi as President of the Presidential Council – Bashaagha and Saleh defeated in final round of voting

On 5 February, using the second method of inter-regional lists, the Libya Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF) elected Abdul Hameed Dabaiba as the new Prime Minister for Libya and Mohammad Menfi as the President of the three-man Presidential Council. Mossa al-Koni and Abdullah Hussein al-Lafi were elected as the other members of the Presidential Council -- representing the South and East respectively. After the initial vote via the second method at the LPDF meeting in Geneva failed to choose a decisive winner, the LPDF delegates then had something akin to a runoff, voting on the two lists achieving the highest number of votes. The choice was between the list headed by Dabaiba (who has allegations of corruption and rigging the LPDF process circling around his name) or the frontrunners (favoured by the UN and most Western countries) headed by the powerful Minister of Interior of the Government of National Accord (GNA), Fathi Bashaagha.To the surprise of many inside and outside Libya, Dabaiba has succeeded in defeating the frontrunners for the new unified executive authority to lead a fourth post-Qadhafi transitional phase for the country. Dabaiba has been seen as an outsider candidate, notable mostly for his somewhat unsavoury business connections. As head of the Libyan Investment and Development Company (LIDCO), Dabaiba is a Libyan construction tycoon with Misratan origins who unexpectedly rose from humble beginnings to make a fortune during and after the Qadhafi era. His brother-in-law Ali Dabaiba, who is currently under investigation for a major fraud in the United Kingdom, was at the centre of a bribery scandal in October last year when he was alleged to have offered 200,000 US Dollars to LPDF delegates to vote for Abdul Hameed’s candidacy (it should be noted that Abdul Hameed Dabaiba has denied the allegations). The Dabaiba family are oligarchs who have supported 'the corrupt status quo economic system' and played all sides of the political divides as they evolved. They have worked with Qadhafi but funded the Muslim Brotherhood and the anti-Qadhafi revolutionaries. They are from Misrata and are connected to its trading class, but have business ties to oligarchs throughout Libya.  They are also allegedly connected to organized crime syndicates in Malta, Tunisia, and Southern Italy.The election of Dabaiba will not change the facts on the ground in the immediate term. Some in the Libyan street are already saying that despite being an uber elite, that Dabaiba is an outsider who will shake things up and can therefore make cross cutting political alliances. Many opponents of Saleh and Bashaagha think that progress for a more united Libya might be possible with an apolitical businessmen and showman at the helm. With the election of an outisder such Dabaiba, who has no security forces to support his nominal ‘government’, the new executive authority does not have any real authority on the ground. However, it seems likely that status quo players everywhere will be happy at Dabaiba's victory as he is the ultimate beneficiary of the level of corruption embedded in the economic status quo.  Bashaagha had vowed to fight corruption and likely even to challenge Sadiq al-Kabir head on.  Dabaiba's family represents the status quo faction and the blend of Qadhafian connections with Libya's new elites.  It seems impossible that economic reform or anti-corruption initiatives could possibly gain traction now.The road ahead for Libya remains particularly troubled. All of the candidates for the executive authority signed an affidavit committing to national elections on 24 December 2021 and committing to not run in those elections. In effect, this would mean the de facto and nominal authorities in Libya voluntarily relinquishing power by the end of the year. However, it must be feared that, like SerrajVisi, the members of the new executive would easily find reasons to stay long beyond their appointed date of departure and that elections will not necessarily happen. Furthermore, the House of Representatives (HoR) and Aquilah Saleh were likely only willing to accept a political process in which Aquilah personally was included and benefited from a new government. Therefore, we predict that Aquilah will try to use the HoR and his veto power to prevent the new body from being seen as legitimate and hence rather than eliminated the HoR's Baida-based al-Thinni executive and Serraj's Tripoli based GNA executive, we could return to a situation of three rival governments rather than just two.