That’s one the Brotherhood lost. Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur has been removed after repeatedly attempting to stock the government with Brotherhood appointees while ignoring the actual results of the election.
The General National Congress voted 125 versus 44 in favor of removing him as prime minister.That’s pretty decisive. The entire attempt was hamfisted and lacked the Brotherhood’s usual subtlety. It was obvious that the Libyan Parliament was never going to accept a list this unbalanced and the lack of regional proportion was fatal in a country where tribal divisions are still behind the ongoing fighting.
But as I wrote yesterday, the Brotherhood plays the long game. It has the money and resources to pay out extensive bribes and it has the militias to spread violence and chaos.
The Muslim Brotherhood may not get its way directly, but if it can discredit and tie up the Libyan government so that people have no choice but to turn to it, then its trip to the top will take a bit longer, but it will still get there. Refusing to offer a credible list was one way of doing it, so that rather than create a legitimate government, the entire process was tanked resulting in a reset. And that will effectively irritate Libyans looking for solutions, not for what they say as more political maneuverings.
This latest news means that Mahmoud Jibril may be making a comeback, but this is a parliamentary system and there are plenty of twists and turns possible. The Libyan Parliament is still more Islamist than not, but it’s not the Muslim Brotherhood’s flavor of transnational Islamists, which is at least a hedge against the Caliphate.
If the Muslim Brotherhood does take Libya, it will be on a path to creating a North African Caliphate that form a regional superstate.
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