Almost all of the belligerent Libyans were represented in the High Financial Control Commission, decreed (18/2023) on Thursday, July 6, 2023, by the Presidential Council and under its chairmanship, to ensure transparency in the allocation and distribution oil revenues. A formation of 17 members in addition to the president and the vice-president.
She represents the Presidential Council, the Government of National Union, the Parliament, the Superior Council of the State, the General Command of Haftar, the Court of Auditors, the Central Bank, the National Petroleum Company as well as the Instance administrative control.
A statement from the UN delegation, issued the same day, expressed “its satisfaction with such a consensual process to resolve differences”. The special envoy of the United States, Richard Norland, participated in the discussions for the formation of this body.
Conceived in this way, the said commission allows the Libyans to keep the initiative in contrast to the Geneva conference of the years 2020/21, sponsored by the UN and international powers. In Geneva, the Parliament and the Superior Council of the State risked losing forever their roles acquired respectively during the elections of June 2014 and July 2012. The election of Abdelhamid Debeiba was made by a commission formed by the representatives of the two chambers in addition to others from Libyan civil society.
After Geneva, the UN and the international powers preferred to recognize a truncated representation of the Libyan people, by the Parliament and the Superior Council of the State, better than the absence of any representation in a country dominated by chaos. From Geneva, Libyan decision-makers prefer to wash their “dirty laundry” away from the eyes of the international community. However, “oil is flowing and foreign powers need not worry too much about energy. For the Libyan people, God will take care of it”, remarks the Libyan judge Jamel Bennour.
Game of interests
The agreement reached on the higher finance control commission clearly indicates that the various components of the current Libyan political class no longer have any interest in waging war. “It is the same situation in 2019 with a demand from the Libyan Eastern bloc, de facto led by Khalifa Haftar, for more fairness and transparency in the distribution of oil resources. However, the way has changed this time. If Haftar tried to seize Tripoli in 2019, today he preferred negotiation,” remarks political scientist Ezzeddine Aguil. “It is clear that all Libyan parties prefer caution in the face of a population that has hated them all,” he adds. “The Libyan Lambda is the main victim of this semblance of conflict which continues,
Furthermore, Libyan judge Jamel Bennoura drew attention to an important detail. He reported that international sites specializing in feats of arms noted that an Ilyushin 76 plane, in the service of Wagner troops, was destroyed on June 30 on the runway of the El Khadem military base, 165 km to the south. from Benghazi. The plane was reportedly shot down by a Turkish Akinci drone, which left from the El Watya air base, 125 km south of Tripoli, and less than 30 km from the Tunisian borders.
“The order would therefore have been given by Tripoli or Ankara to attack this plane, by exploiting the estrangement between Moscow and the Wagners”, noted the judge, adding that “such an offense would have caused a war at other times”. “The Libyan belligerents would have become more conciliatory in the treatment of their differences; the juicy remuneration would not be foreign to these behaviors, ”he concludes. Libya has an interest in rejuvenating its political class to emerge from the current chaos.
