Legislative Process in Libya

Date

2022-9

Type

Chapter

Book title

Democratic Arabic Center for Strategic, Political & Economic Studies

Author(s)

Dr. Mustafa Abdalla A. Kashiem

Pages

48 - 73

Abstract

Abstract Libya's practice of the legislative process goes back to the 1950s, when the first parliament was elected during the constitutional monarchy era. Nevertheless, the Kaddafi regime era (1969-2011) resulted in a vacuum in the legislative process. The resumption of the Libyan legislative process reoccurred since the early days of the 17th February Revolution of 2011; therefore, the National Transitional Council “NTC” was established (in September 2011) by revolutionary leaders from different parts of Libya. The most important legal document that the NTC issued is the Interim Constitutional Declaration “ICD” in August 2011, a legal document that draws the roadmap for transitional democracy in Libya. The NTC's legislative processes, especially the National General Congress (NGC), reflected the division of labor technique; thus, permanents, non-permanents, and general committees were operational. This study assumes that the Libyan legislative process is a policy influencing rather than an executive-dominated branch of government. In order to examine the influence of the NTC and the NGC on public policy, this study is divided into different sections. Although the Libyan people elected their assembly members in 1964, the election was repeated in 1965. However, the elections of 1964 and 1965 were fraught ones. The 1965 election was generally the last conducted due to the King's dissatisfaction and criticism of political corruption since the early 1960s. The findings of this study support, by and large, the underlying hypothesis that described the NTC and the NGC as policy-influencing rather than executive-dominated legislative bodies. Keywords: February Revolution, Legislative-Process, Roadmap, Internal System, National General Congress, National Transitional Council, Libyan House of Representatives “HoR”, Interim Constitutional Declaration, and Government of National Salvation “GNS”.

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