Libyan Election Commission began Monday evening to disseminate preliminary results of elections, as the liberal coalition is a clear winner in some areas, beating Its main political opponents, the Islamists. Counting the votes could however take another four or five days. Liberals of the National Forces Alliance (AFN) have a clear victory in Janzur, where they had 26,798 votes against the 2,423 obtained by the Justice and Construction Party (PJC, political branch of Muslim Brothers), ranked second. A resounding victory was announced in Zliten, town nearby Misrata, where AFN won 19,273 votes, against only 5,625 votes for PJC.
The voting boxes are shipped, mostly by plane, from the Libyan territory to the Mitiga military airport in Tripoli, where the accuracy of the count is checked, before being validated. In Misrata, a former stronghold of the rebels besieged for several months in 2011 during the conflict with the forces of Muammar Gadhafi, AFN was ranked fourth, well behind a small local political party, behind the PJC and the National Front (with Islamic trends). The commission, which has not set the date when the final results will be announced, said that counting and gathering information may take longer than originally expected, taking into account the distance and security issues.
Despite violence and sabotage acts of militants in eastern Libya, the first free election is considered a success, more than four decades of Muammar Gadhafi’s regime which abolished elections. Voters were called to the polls to elect 200 members of the General National Congress, which will replace the National Transitional Council (NTC) until the adoption of the new Constitution.
Analyzing these first results, Libya appears to have resisted the Islamist wave that swept Egypt and Tunisia, during the Arab Spring, even though AFN, as all parties of this ultra-conservative society, used the theme of Islam during the campaign. There are about 60 political parties and some independent candidates in the liberal coalition, under the leadership of technocrats who have lived abroad and have supported a moderate Islam, economic liberalization and openness to the West.
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