Libya: Political Exclusion Law Committee finally gets going

 

The 77-member Committee of Applying the Standards of Taking Up Public Posts, the body tasked with implementing the political exclusion law, has begun its work in earnest. This week, the committee, comprising mainly those who were part of the old Integrity Committee, summoned 11 members of the Congress to inform them that the Political Exclusion Law applies to them.

Four of these 11 have already attended committee sessions and all demanded that they be given one week to prove that the law is not applicable to them. It appears that the committee granted them their request and that they will all have the chance to defend themselves. The remaining seven from this first batch are due to attend hearings with the committee this coming week.

 

This first group is clearly just the tip of the iceberg and represents the first set of cases that the committee had been able to work its way through. According to the committee, out of 200 Congress members, so far only 98 of them have actually completed and handed in the compulsory forms distributed by the committee that oblige members to provide details of their past. Implementation of the law is clearly going to be a long, drawn-out process.

 

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