Libya Elections: Liberal Alliance Surging in Initial Results

The preliminary results in Libya’s national assembly election suggest a liberal alliance headed by Western-educated economist Mahmoud Jebril is edging out more conservative Islamist parties.

It’s been a pretty consensual campaign, some would even say dull. In Tunisia, you had a clear divide between the secularists and the Islamists. In the Libyan campaign you had no such divide.”

This weekend, Jebril called on all of Libya’s political parties to “come all together in one coalition, under one banner… to reach a compromise, a consensus on which the constitution can be drafted and the new government can be composed.”

Jebril has criticized the media’s use of the label “liberal” to describe his coalition, and calls his alliance inclusive rather than ideological. It’s a sign the competing parties may be drawing closer together.

The post-campaign looks pretty much like the campaign looked like, which is the parties are competing but without any clear political fault lines between them.