Key officials at Libya’s election commission have resigned insisting it is unable to hold the landmark election as scheduled on Dec. 24.
The chief of Libya’s election commission, Emad al-Sayeh announced the stepping down of the board of directors. It came after the operations of auxiliary election committees were suspended on Tuesday in a further sign the vote was unlikely to proceed as planned.
Libya’s parliament is yet to make an official announcement and the election commission hasn’t released a final list of candidates.
Earlier this month, the High State Council (HSC) called for the presidential election to be delayed to February. The advisory body, which was created through a 2015 peace agreement but is not recognised by all other Libyan political entities, called for the delay in a statement less than three weeks before the vote.
Days later, Libya’s election commission said it would not publish a list of presidential candidates until it settled some legal issues, leaving almost no time to hold the vote as planned.
Among those who registered to run are a son of Libya’s former autocratic leader Moammar Al Qaddafi, eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar and the prime minister of the unity government, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah.
The election is a key step following long-running United Nations-brokered talks aimed at ending a decade of conflict that ravaged the North African OPEC nation and battered its economy.