Libyan monarchists will gather this week for a conference aimed at forming a bloc to advance their aim of restoring the country’s short-lived crown rule.
But experts are highly skeptical the monarchists can successfully become a poitical force amid the country’s political turmoil, much less successfully elevate presumptive heir Mohammed Hassan El Senussi to lead the state.
Organizers expect up to 600 people to attend the conference to be held in the north western city of Gharyan Tuesday. Libya was a kingdom with substantial powers vested in the head of state from independence in 1951 until its overthrow in the 1969 coup d’etat.
Sami Abu Al-Asaad, one of the organizers, said the aim is to form a united block to call for a reactivation of Libya’s independence constitution and the royalist regime. This bloc will then ask the United Nations for support, he told the Libya Observer. They want a constitutional monarchy.
But a restoration of the monarchy is highly unlikely, it not impossible, said Barak Barfi, a research fellow at the New America Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
“It is unlikely the Senussis can restore the monarchy, ” Barfi told Maghreb News Wire, “but there will always be some who will support it.”
He added, “Bottom line – this will go nowhere.”
Barfi explained that El Senussi appeared popular among a substantial number of the population in the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, a phenomenon that mirrored what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“These movements arose to unify fragmented countries,” Barfi said.
But he added, “in Libya, Sanussi members supported the Cyrenican federalism movement. This made them suspect in the eyes of many Libyans.”
The Cyrenican federalism movement is based in the east of the country, and advocates splitting Libya along federal lines, a position deeply opposed by many, including the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli.
Abu Al-Asaad told the Libyan Observer the move to restore the monarchy is an attempt to find “a peaceful solution to end the crisis.”
El-Senussi, an active commentator on Libyan affairs, is the great nephew of the late King Idris, who was king from independence to 1969.
