Libyan bellwether

From Tripoli:

It is hard not to share Libyans’ affection for their revolution.  They are thrilled with themselves.  Qaddafi seemed forever, especially after the United States normalized relations with Libya in 2004.  But somehow in a relatively few months last year they found the courage and the means to evict him from power and establish what they hope will be a free society and a democratic state.

The odds are long.  Libya has no democratic tradition.  Elections were not held at all during Qaddafi’s 42 years in power.  The violence of the Libyan revolution, supported by NATO air power, has left thousands of armed youths and dozens of militias scattered throughout the country.  This week a mob claiming to object to the geographic distribution of parliamentary seats  attacked the elections commission office in Benghazi.  Their looting of the computers and other equipment suggests other motives, as did the green shirts some of the youths wore (green was Qaddafi’s favored color).  There are also threats of an election boycott in the south, where clashes have occurred recently.  Disorder lurks not far below the apparently peaceful and relatively orderly surface.

It is not however hard to find a hopeful Libyan. Things were so bad under Qaddafi that improvement will not be difficult.  Libyans believe themselves moderate people who will not reward the Muslim Brotherhood or the more radical Salifists the way Egypt did, a woman with hair covered by a hijab says to me.  It has taken time for Libyans to begin to understand that the election on July 7 is important.  Some thought they had fulfilled their civic obligation when they registered to vote.  No one knows how many will turn out or how they will vote, but there is ample choice and a real possibility of new faces emerging.

Women in Libya will run both as individuals for 120 seats in the assembly as well as on party lists for the remaining 80.  The party lists are required to alternate male and female names.  An Italian businessman who has been coming to Libya for decades was surprised they were even being allowed to vote.  There is palpable distrust in political parties, which have emerged only in the past year.  Individual reputation and standing is expected to count for a lot.

I enjoyed dinner this evening with activists from Egypt and Morocco.  The contrast with Libya could not be stronger.  Egypt has elected a Muslim Brotherhood president who will now engage in a complicated tug of war with the country’s still powerful Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has dissolved the elected parliament.  The Moroccan king has nominally begun a reform process with a new constitution and elections that returned an Islamist-led government, but things there remain as always:  absolute monarchy rules.

Libya, a country many in the region view as backward, has a grand opportunity with the elections this week.  If they go well, it will mark an important step forward in a democratic direction for the Arab awakening, which has lost a lot of its shine in recent months due to profound confusion in Egypt, extreme violence in Syria and a half-baked outcome in Yemen.  If the elections in Libya go poorly, with violence or boycott undermining their legitimacy, it will be a giant step backwards.  Libya is not the largest or most important country in the Arab world, but right now it is a bellwether that counts.