Early Libyan Election Results Show Strong Performance For Jibril

Mahmoud Jibril (photo credit: The Telegraph)

The High National Elections Commission (HNEC) of Libya released the latest round of preliminary election results (Arabic) for the General National Congress (GNC). Of the 200 seats in the upcoming congress, 120 are open to individuals, while the remaining 80 seats are reserved for closed party lists.

The most recent party-list results reveal that former NTC Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril’s coalition, the National Forces Alliance, has garnered 40 of the 80 party-list seats. The Justice and Construction Party – the independent political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood – came in a distant second place with 16. The other major national parties did significantly worse than expected, with Abdelhakim Belhadj’s Homeland Party and Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf’s National Front Party taking  just 2 and 3 seats respectively. Rounding out the party-list results, 19 smaller parties received 1 seat each.

Although preliminary results for most of the individual candidacy winners have been reported as well, their affiliations to parties, if any, remain unclear. The basis of the GNC’s coalition will thus depend heavily on how these 120 representatives choose to align.