“It’s a very short and sensitive period of time and we need to build the new institutions. We want to make sure these new institutions and our new constitution are built with clean hands,” said Toumi, a trained pilot and former opposition activist who spent 18 years in prison during Gadhafi’s regime.
Some Libyans activists believe the law will have the opposite of its intended effects.
“From a legal perspective it's a law which enshrines retribution and punishment over accountability and the rule of law,” said Elham Saudi, director of Lawyers for Justice in Libya, told Al-Monitor.
“What this law enshrines is revolutionary legitimacy, where merit is assessed by perceived political affiliations and not deeds or qualifications,” said Saudi. “What we need is the rule of law — enshrined not through a sweeping law that disenfranchises people from the political process but which encourages political participation by all and ensures accountability by all who committed crimes whether in the past or present."
“It’s de-Baathification all over again,” said a prominent Libyan rights activist who did want to be named due to his current work with the government, referring to the political purging policy implemented in Iraq to disastrous effect.
“(The law) bans a lot of good people who have expertise running the government,” said activist Mohammed Ben Halim.“A lot of people who stayed in the country (during Gadhafi’s rule) had no option but to work in the government. They were not corrupt.”
The wide net cast by the language of the current draft is also a cause for concern from some camps. A Human Rights Watch statement issued last month encouraged the GNC to “define explicitly which positions under Gadhafi and which past acts warrant exclusion from public office, and for how long.” The monitoring group warned that “vague terminology” would enable the law to be used for partisan purposes.
Maggie Fick is a Cairo-based journalist. Follow her on Twitter @maggiefick.
