“Sons of Libya” ask UN to stop recognize GNA as the official government of Libya

#Libyan_Cloud_News_Agency – Tripoli.

The group “Sons of Libya” sent an open letter to the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday regarding the recognition of the Government of National Accord GNA by the UN. The group – intellectuals, political and media activists – requested in their statement No. 18 the UN to seriously and urgently consider to withdraw the UN recognition of the Presidential Council and the GNA.

The statement mentions the following reasons to withdraw:

– The Presidential Council is not elected, and has not been chosen or approved by an elected body. It does not reflect the will of the people, which is the basis of legitimacy.

– The Presidential Council twice failed to gain confidence in its government from the elected legislative body and its cabinet members were not sworn in before parliament.

– The Presidential Council lost all the cases dealt with in Libyan courts. Several cases were declared illegal and invalid, and thus are economic crimes do not fall into limitation.

– One third of the members of the Presidential Council resigned or boycotted its work. And the resolutions were the consensus stipulated in the Skhirat Agreement.

– According to the Skhirat Agreement (which was not included in the Constitutional Declaration at all), the term of the Presidential Council is one year – renewable for another year at most, which is almost the fourth year without any legal or consensual basis.

– The Presidential Council has authority over less than 2% of Libya’s territory and over less than 1% of its wealth. However, it uses UN recognition to control 100% of the Libyan people’s financial resources through the total acquisition of the Central Bank of Libya’s international signatures. It was twice dismissed by Parliament and exceeded its legal term by years.

– The Presidential Council is not subject to parliamentary oversight, and dares to spend public spending, waste and acquisitions without parliamentary approval.

– The Presidential Council was involved in using the funds of the Libyan people to finance terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIS (Benghazi Brigades and Shura Darnah) and others.

– Without a constitutional mandate, and without parliamentary approval, the Presidential Council signed bilateral agreements with several countries, vague in content and in the consequences. A few days ago, the Presidential Council surprised with the announcement of a 10-billion-euro subway project in Tripoli, while the Presidential Council failed to provide cash at banks to cover the salaries of state employees. Citizens suffer from long hours of power cuts and poor public services.

The “Sons of Libya” warned that if the UN continued to recognize the Presidential Council and the Government of National Accord, the UN would be responsible for what the suffering of the Libyan people as well as the waste of money. The group added that the time has come for the UN to apply international standards and to respect the Libyan Constitutional Declaration and the rulings of the Libyan courts.

The group demanded that the Security Council immediately withdrew the recognition of the Presidential Council and correct what they considered to be the mistake committed by the Security Council in its resolution 2259.