After a frustrating delay, Libya's General National Congress (GNC) has finally decided on the method by which the committee to draft the new constitution will be selected: direct election as under Amendment Three to the Draft Constitutional Declaration. The ability of the GNC to meet and make vital decisions such as selecting a prime minister and approving his choice of government has been repeatedly hampered by inadequate security that has repeatedly allowed protesters - sometimes armed - to occupy the assembly hall. The GNC is now supposed to have its own security force to prevent such incidents. However, despite increased security, protesters occupied the hall yet on 3 February and were still there on 5 February. The GNC had to meet elsewhere in the meantime.Despite these growing security concerns, there is hope that Libya would be able to carry out a second post-conflict election, following the successful conduct of the GNC election on 7 July 2012. The question is whether this system would be advisable. The GNC's latest decision means that the future constitutional committee will be patterned after the 1951 constitutional committee, meaning that it will have exactly 60 members, with 20 members representing each of the three historical regions of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Fezzan. Voters will select committee members only for their own region. This constitutional committee model has the difficulty that it may unfairly bias the future constitution in favor of a federal system of government before the first draft is even written. The pro-federalist militants who pushed the NTC into amending the Draft Constitutional Declaration just two days before the GNC election so that the constitutional committee would be elected by the people instead of selected by the GNC as a compromise for allowing the 7 July election to go forward have now gotten their wish.It cannot be stressed enough that "appeasement of local actors via regional autonomy is a recipe for disaster." Federalism in Libya - tried and failed.
Libya's Constitutional Committee to Be Elected