Libya's politics: a temporary charter and seats counted by region

Why Libya counts its constitutional seats by region

The Constitutional Declaration of 2011 fixed the size of the body that would write the permanent text before anyone had been elected to it. Article 30 called for a constituent assembly "which shall consist of sixty members in reference to the Committee of Sixty that was formed to prepare the constitution of independence of Libya in 1951", elected directly, deciding by two thirds plus one and finishing a draft within 120 days of its first session.

The assembly was elected on 20 February 2014 with twenty members from each historical region. Six seats were reserved for women and two each for the Amazigh, Tebu and Tuareg minorities, and every candidate stood as an individual, with no party lists. Even the committee appointed on 13 February 2013 to draft the electoral law had one member per region.

Not every community took part. The Amazigh boycotted both the election and the assembly's work, and the BTI's 2026 country report records that the Tuareg and Tebu later joined them; two Amazigh seats were still unfilled after the polls of April and May 2014. MERIP links the boycott to the National Transitional Council, which largely dismissed Amazigh demands for a guaranteed number of seats.

The regional rule outlasted the assembly. Its draft was approved by a two-thirds majority in July 2017. On 26 November 2018 the House of Representatives adopted the tenth amendment to the declaration, which split the country into three voting districts for the referendum on that draft, so that it would be counted region by region. On 10 February 2022 the House approved a twelfth amendment replacing the draft with a new committee of 24, divided equally among the three regions; the High Council of State rejected it on 24 February by 51 votes of 60.

The same arithmetic ran through the kingdom, whose Senate under the constitution of October 1951 held eight representatives from each province. The thirds are equal in seats, although Britannica describes Tripolitania as the more populous region. Bodies set up between the two camps were cut in halves instead: five members from each side on the Joint Military Commission of 2020, and a joint committee of the House and the High Council of State, the 6+6 Committee, on the electoral laws.

What the temporary declaration still governs

The National Transitional Council, formed in Benghazi on 27 February 2011, issued the Constitutional Declaration on 3 August 2011 "as a basis for the exercise of power in the transitional period until the adoption of a permanent Constitution by general popular referendum". Its 37 articles name Tripoli as the capital, Islam as the religion of the state and Islamic Sharia as "the main source of legislation", make Arabic the official language and guarantee the linguistic and cultural rights of "the Amazigh, the Tabous, the Touareg and the other components of the Libyan society".

Its timetable was counted in days. The General National Congress was to be elected within 240 days of the declaration of liberation, which came on 23 October 2011. The constituent assembly then had 120 days to adopt a draft and the referendum was due within 30 days after that, with two thirds of the voters needed to pass it. The Wikipedia entry on the declaration reckons those deadlines would have put a permanent constitution in place by around December 2013.

The declaration also kept the old state's laws working. Article 35 leaves existing legislation in force wherever it does not conflict, reads every reference to the "General People's Congress" as the National Transitional Council or the General National Congress, and every mention of the "Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" as Libya. In March 2023, the BTI report records, the Law Department of the High Judicial Council held every civic organisation registered after 2011 invalid except those registered under Law 19 of 2001, a statute of the Gaddafi years.

The text has been amended in place, 13 times by October 2023. The thirteenth amendment, passed by both the House and the High Council of State in March 2023, has 34 articles defining a new system of government and the tasks of an elected president and prime minister. Who interprets the declaration is itself contested. The House passed Law No. 5 of 2023 creating a Supreme Constitutional Court in Benghazi, and the Presidential Council annulled it by decree, ConstitutionNet reported on 2 May 2025, citing a ruling by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court that the law was unconstitutional.

How the Jamahiriya ruled without parties or a constitution

The declaration of 2011 replaced a state that had run for four decades on a provisional text. After the coup of 1 September 1969 a twelve-member Revolutionary Command Council abolished the constitution of 1951, which Gaddafi branded a neocolonial document, and on 11 December 1969 issued a constitutional proclamation meant to serve until a new constitution could be drafted. ConstitutionNet records that declarations in 1975, 1977 and 1978 and Gaddafi's Green Book then reshaped it. No permanent constitution followed.

Political parties were banned from 1972, and Law 75 of 1973 made dissent illegal. On 2 March 1977 the General People's Congress adopted the "Declaration on the Establishment of the Authority of the People" and proclaimed the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. The new word was built from jumhuriyah, the usual Arabic rendering of republic, by turning its component jumhur, "public", into the plural jamahir, "the masses".

In the official account every adult had the right and duty to take part in a Basic People's Congress, whose decisions passed up to a General People's Congress of 2,700 representatives. In March 1979 the congress declared the "separation of the state from the revolution" complete and Gaddafi gave up the post of general secretary. He held no formal government office after that. He kept command of the armed forces and headed a "revolutionary sector" that faced no election and oversaw revolutionary committees, which in 1979 took control of elections to the basic congresses.

The ban of 1972 had a precedent. The kingdom abolished parties after its first general election, on 19 February 1952, and outlawed the National Congress Party, which had campaigned against the federal form of government.

How two elected bodies outlived their mandates

Every national institution with an electoral mandate traces it to one of two votes. On 7 July 2012 Libyans elected a General National Congress of 200 members, 80 by party-list proportional representation and 120 as independents, from 2,501 candidates, on a turnout of about 60%. The National Transitional Council handed over power on 8 August 2012.

The election of 25 June 2014, for a House of Representatives of 200 seats with 30 reserved for women, drew a turnout of about 18%, and in several areas voting did not take place for security reasons. The House opened in Tobruk on 4 August 2014 with 158 of 188 members present. For want of housing in the town it first chartered the Elyros, a car ferry operated by the Greek company ANEK Lines, as lodging and meeting space. Members of the outgoing congress reconvened in Tripoli that August and refused to recognise it, and on 6 November 2014 a court ruling in Tripoli declared the election unconstitutional, which the House rejected.

The House's term was due to end on 20 October 2015, and on 6 October it voted, 112 of 131 members, to extend it. The Libyan Political Agreement, signed at Skhirat in Morocco on 17 December 2015, then named the House "elected in June 2014" as the legislative authority for the transition and continued its term "until convening of the first session of the legislative authority as per the Libyan Constitution". That ties the term to a constitution that has not been adopted.

The same agreement built the High Council of State out of the congress of 2012: 145 members, 134 still sitting in the General National Congress at the signing and 11 more from the lists of the July 2012 election. It calls the council "the highest consultative Assembly of the State" and requires the House to reach consensus with it on senior posts, the governor of the Central Bank and the head of the Supreme Court among them. Its term ends with the House's.

In August 2025 the head of the elections commission briefed the head of the Presidential Council on what was blocking a referendum on the draft constitution and on "the parliament's extension of its mandate without a public referendum", ConstitutionNet reported.

Who has led the executive since Skhirat

The agreement of 2015 built its executive around a Presidency Council of nine, the prime minister with five deputies and three ministers, whose decisions needed the unanimity of the prime minister and his deputies. The Government of National Accord was to serve a year from a vote of confidence in the House, but the House refused to endorse its proposed ministers. Britannica records that its mandate under the agreement expired in December 2017, and on 17 December 2017 Khalifa Haftar, commander of the eastern forces, declared the agreement void.

His Libyan National Army, also known as the Libyan Arab Armed Forces, attacked Tripoli in April 2019, and the 14-month siege ended in June 2020 after Turkey deployed troops for the government. A ceasefire signed on 23 October 2020 by the 5+5 Joint Military Commission required foreign fighters to leave within three months.

A forum chose the next executive. The UN-convened Libyan Political Dialogue Forum required its members to declare themselves ineligible for the posts it would fill, and on 18 January 2021, 51 of the 72 members voting approved a selection by electoral colleges, with 60% needed in a first round. On 5 February 2021 it chose a three-member Presidential Council and, as prime minister, the businessman Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh. The House approved the Government of National Unity on 10 March 2021 by 121 votes, with a mandate to serve until elections or through June 2022.

The House withdrew its confidence on 21 September 2021 by 83 of the 113 members present, and on 1 March 2022 approved a rival cabinet under Fathi Bashagha, the Government of National Stability, by 92 of 101 votes according to its speaker. The High Council of State condemned that vote as "unilateral action" in breach of the 2015 agreement. The House replaced Bashagha in May 2023. BTI's assessment is that the country "has remained split into two, with two governments and state institutions torn between them": the Government of National Unity and the Presidential Council in Tripoli, and in the east a government appointed by the House and backed by the Libyan Arab Armed Forces.

Why national elections keep being postponed

The House election of June 2014 was the last national vote. Leaders meeting in Paris in May 2018 agreed on elections for 10 December 2018, a plan Britannica records was disrupted by a missed September deadline for the electoral framework. The forum of 2021 then set 24 December 2021.

By August 2021, 2.83 million people had registered. Of the 98 who applied to run for president, the commission's preliminary list of 24 November carried 73; among those excluded was Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, under the article of the electoral law covering criminal convictions. Courts then reversed several decisions: the Tripoli Court of Appeal restored four candidates, the unity government's prime minister among them, on 1 December, and the Sabha Court of Appeal reinstated Gaddafi's son the next day. On 22 December the chairman of the election committee declared it impossible to vote on the 24th and gave no new date. BTI counts the prime minister's candidacy as a violation of the original political agreement, under which the interim leaders had first agreed not to stand.

Plans have kept coming. On 18 June 2026 the heads of the House, the High Council of State and the Presidential Council agreed to hold elections by 17 February 2027 on the 6+6 rules and the thirteenth amendment. At the end of August 2026, ConstitutionNet reported, the rival factions signed a draft agreement for presidential and parliamentary elections within two years and left the permanent constitution, its adoption included, to the parliament those elections would produce. If the House and the High Council failed to approve it within a month, the parties would seek its adoption through "broader national mechanisms" and the backing of the UN Security Council.

Below the national level, councils are elected. Municipal elections were held in rounds from 2011 to 2012, in 2014, from 2019 to 2021 and from 2024 to 2026, and the commission ran a first set in 58 towns and cities in November 2024, with candidates standing as independents or on nonpartisan lists.

How oil money holds the rival authorities together

The rival governments draw on one treasury. In its bulletin for 2025 the Central Bank of Libya reported revenue of 136.86 billion dinars, of which oil sales and royalties made up 116.8 billion and taxes 2.8 billion, and spending of 136.8 billion dinars, of which state-sector salaries took 73.3 billion. The IMF mission of April 2026 put the wage bill at around 30% of GDP and found "insufficient transparency regarding the composition and financing of the budget of the Eastern part of the country".

The Congressional Research Service describes the National Oil Corporation and the central bank as governing "the oil operations, revenues, and public sector payments on which most Libyans rely", and both have been fought over. In January 2018 the House appointed its own governor to the eastern branch of the bank. That June eastern forces announced that the oil ports they held would be run by an eastern oil corporation; foreign governments said they would trade only with the corporation in Tripoli, and on 11 July the ports went back to it. A blockade of the corporation that began in January 2020 was lifted that September after an agreement to share its revenue.

The crisis of 2024 followed the same course. In August, Freedom House reports, armed forces affiliated with the Government of National Unity put pressure on the central bank in an alleged attempt to make its governor resign; BTI adds that the bank's IT director was abducted and the governor left the country. The eastern authorities shut oil fields and terminals in response, and a UN-brokered agreement on new leadership for the bank ended the crisis in late September 2024. The African Development Bank reports an agreement on a unified national budget in April 2026.

The armed groups are on the same payroll. BTI writes that the factions pursue their own interests "despite being on the government's payroll", and that in the east a Military Investment Authority has controlled construction and development in Benghazi and Derna.

Which foreign powers back the eastern and western camps

Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt backed the eastern forces' attack on Tripoli in 2019, according to the Congressional Research Service, and Turkish military support let the government force them back. The brief records a line of control west of Sirte between the coalitions since then, a Turkish military presence extended to 2026, and reports in 2024 of Russian weapons and "Africa Corps" personnel sent to the east and south. BTI notes that Egypt and the Emirates, after favouring the east, made oil, gas and development agreements with the western government from 2020, while Egypt has kept close ties with the eastern authorities on migrant workers and border control.

The Security Council acted twice on Libya in early 2011. Resolution 1970 referred Gaddafi, his family and his security officials to the International Criminal Court, and Resolution 1973 of 17 March 2011, passed by ten votes to none with five abstentions, authorised a no-fly zone. The Congressional Research Service noted in 2025 that billions in Gaddafi-era state assets remained frozen abroad under UN sanctions. The UN mission facilitated the talks of 2015 and convened the forum of 2021, and on 23 October 2025, the fifth anniversary of the ceasefire, it commended the parties and the 5+5 commission.

Libya joined the Arab League on 28 March 1953 and belongs to the African Union, OPEC and the Arab Maghreb Union; BTI finds its own involvement in the African Union minimal since 2011.

How rights fare under both authorities

Freedom House rated Libya "Not Free" in its 2025 report, with 10 points out of 100: 2 of 40 for political rights and 8 of 60 for civil liberties, one more than the year before. The gain came on the electoral framework, because the commission ran the local polls of November 2024.

The report's cases fall on both sides. In Benghazi, armed forces abducted the Sufi cleric Sheikh Muftah al-Amin al-Biju in February 2024, Ibrahim al-Darsi, a member of the House of Representatives, was kidnapped that May, and the political analyst Siraj Dughman died in custody in April. In Tripoli, security forces arrested the journalist Ahmed al-Sanussi in July 2024 after he reported on alleged corruption in the unity government. That July the Derna Criminal Court sentenced 12 current and former officials to between nine and 27 years over the dam collapse of 2023, in a trial Freedom House criticised for failing to hold key figures in either government to account.

From April 2023, BTI records, the Internal Security Agency in Tripoli required women travelling abroad without a male guardian to fill in a form explaining why, and a Presidential Council decree of July 2024 set up a morality police. In the Arab Barometer survey of 2022 that BTI cites, 42% of respondents trusted municipal councils "a great deal" or "quite a lot" and 55% the judiciary, while the House of Representatives and the High Council of State drew less trust than either.