The paper on the judiciary does not seem to relate to the federalism at all. For example, it does not include much in the way of guaranteed representation in the constitutional court on a territorial basis.
And that is pretty much it. Not much to write about and many blank spaces as far as the detailed workings of federalism are concerned. However, the Libyan drafting committee is to be congratulated on its efforts to achieve greater clarity regarding the division of power between the centre and the provinces than what has emerged in Iraq.
Still today, almost 10 years after the adoption of the post-Baath constitution in October 2005, Iraq is struggling to define the relationship between Baghdad, current and future federal regions, and ordinary governorates. The decision by the new Abadi government to withdraw a legal challenge to far-ranging revisions of the provincial powers law passed by the previous parliament in 2013 really does nothing to clear up the situation: Symptomatically, the move was coupled with an initiative to introduce revisions to the revised law. By comparison, these Libyan papers offer at least a modicum of clarity as regards the intended division of power between the centre and the provinces.
The bigger question, of course, is whether something along the lines of this draft stands any change of popular democratic approval in the current chaotic conditions in Libya. If the draft converges in the direction of a decentralized system that retains central control of overarching sectors, political currents of a far more radical nature, including pure separatism, are proliferating on the ground, especially in the eastern Cyrenaica region.
Again compared to Iraq, Cyrenaica arguably has a more dominant role in Libya’s oil production than Kurdistan has in Iraq, making the question of what will be acceptable in terms of a federal deal potentially an even more contentious issue. So far, the Libyan constitutional committee is offering far less to the provinces than the Iraqi committee dominated by the Kurds and one of the Shiite parties (SCIRI) did in 2005.
All in all, it could offer a more viable formula for a unified state, but it could also prompt so strong reactions that the constitutional process itself gets aborted and separatism prevails.