The announcement by several municipal officials in Libya's central region, on Monday, 8 June, of the establishment of the "Central Region Province" received no official response and was met with opposition from several activists and civil society. The official page of Misrata Municipality, located about 200 kilometres east of Tripoli, published a statement announcing what it described as the "birth of the Central Region Province", stating that its establishment represents "a new beginning carrying broad prospects for development and institutional work".
The statement stressed that the province is "not merely an organisational declaration but a step towards a more coordinated and integrated future and the beginning of a journey built on cooperation and a shared vision to serve the region and its people".
It later published another statement stating that the declaration covered the municipalities of Misrata, Bani Walid, Tininai, Al-Mardum, Zliten, Al-Khums, Tarhuna, Qasr Al-Akhyar and Msallata. These municipalities span a geographical area surrounding the city of Misrata, from west of Sirte in the east to Tarhuna, southeast of Tripoli.
The territory possesses significant demographic and economic weight, including the cities of Misrata and Zliten, which are among the largest population centres in the country after Tripoli and Benghazi. It also includes three commercial ports and a free zone, as well as Misrata's military and political influence and its status as the hometown of the prime minister of the Government of National Unity, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh.
Despite days passing since the announcement, no official comment has been issued by the House of Representatives, the High Council of State, the Presidential Council, or the country's two opposing governments: the Government of National Unity in Tripoli and the House of Representatives-affiliated government in Benghazi.
For its part, the media office of the Ministry of Local Government in the Government of National Unity told The New Arab that it preferred not to comment, arguing that the ministry had not received any official correspondence from the municipalities concerned with the announcement.
At the same time, the declaration faced objections from dozens of citizens.
Some gathered outside the headquarters of the municipal councils in Bani Walid and Tarhuna and blocked their entrances with piles of dirt as a protest against the announcement.
Meanwhile, Misrata Municipality stopped following up on the announcement and resumed publishing routine news about its daily activities, without any updates on the project.
In comments to TNA, Tarhuna Mayor Mohammed Al-Kashar remarked that the announcement was the outcome of a series of meetings among several municipalities in central Libya to discuss the possibility of launching an "administrative initiative" to coordinate municipal efforts in services and economic and development projects.
Al-Kashar explained that the municipalities included in the announcement share similar needs and economic characteristics.
He stressed in his brief remarks that there were no political dimensions to the "initiative".
By contrast, House of Representatives member for Tarhuna, Mohammed Al-Abbani, rejected the move, arguing that, under current circumstances, the proposal for the "idea of provinces" could "open the door wide to similar projects in other regions".
He warned that this could "lead to the production of similar ideas that deepen divisions and threaten the unity of the country".
Former Misrata Municipal Council member Ali Bouzeid argued that the idea underlying the announcement "cannot be legally justified, as there is nothing in the country's legislation that allows it to pass, let alone legitimise it."
"Administrative organisation in the country operates according to the municipal system, and the furthest the country previously went was the governorate system," he added.
Bouzeid further told TNA that the "widespread disregard" for the announcement by civil and political forces in Misrata was "the best way to respond to it".
"This project can be placed within a series of previous projects sponsored by Dbeibeh, such as the project to gather Libya's mukhtars into a single body in 2023, the Union of Municipal Mayors in 2024, and the Union of Libyan Presidencies in 2025, in repeated attempts to create mobilisation around him," he added.
In the context of social reactions to the announcement, Faraj Al-Faitouri, a member of the Libyan Supreme Council of Tribes ( Ahli ), believes that no historical or social basis supports the "announcement project".
He rhetorically asked, during comments to TNA , "If the province is based on demographic weight, there are large tribes in the region whose presence extends beyond it into the African belt to the south, such as Warfalla and Tarhuna. Misrata itself has key social extensions within the Benghazi region. On what demographic or social basis, then, is this kind of declaration of a new province founded?"
Al-Faitouri added that establishing a province requires broad national dialogue beforehand to involve society in the process.
He further questioned, "Have the municipalities done that?"
However, political activist Arhouma Al-Tabbal believes the announcement is driven by the "political constraints and pressures" facing the Government of National Unity, noting that the "components" behind the declaration of the province are "all figures close to the Government of National Unity".
Al-Tabbal told TNA that the announcement of a fourth province was "a political idea that was stillborn and ended the moment it was declared, and all it can really serve is to provide a reading of the internal situation of the Government of National Unity".
He also described it as an attempt by its head, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, to "rearrange his political position after the sharp decline in his influence".
Explaining his view, al-Tabbal said, "Provinces are no more than a historical concept. Administratively, Libya had states rather than provinces: Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan. These were abolished through Libyan constitutional consensus after the constitutional amendment of 1963, and Libya then adopted a governorate system, whose number exceeded 12 governorates at the time, followed later by municipalities."
He stressed that the idea of provinces "has no constitutional basis".
Al-Tabbal argued: "Dbeibeh is behind this step in an attempt to create a new political reality and test reactions towards it. The announcement is significant only insofar as it reveals the scale of the pressures Dbeibeh faces and conceals. In Misrata, the circle of his opponents is expanding. In western Libya, opposition armed blocs have begun to form, as in the city of Zawiya, from which the interior minister in the House of Representatives-affiliated government hails. Inside Tripoli, opposition is growing to the extent that opponents of the government exploited sports-related unrest in recent weeks to burn the government headquarters. The major armed formations in the capital are also no longer fully under Dbeibeh's control."
Amid this reality, Dbeibeh pushed municipal officials close to him towards this announcement, according to al-Tabbal's reading.
He viewed it as a step that "falls within an attempt to reshape political balances through creating a new regional framework, rather than being an administrative or developmental project as claimed".
He stressed that the absence of supportive comments from government backers, including activists, "reflects the project's failure and death at the moment of its birth".
While reiterating that the establishment of any administrative organisation requires clear constitutional and legislative legitimacy, al-Tabbal also accused the political bodies established after 2011 of reviving the idea of provinces.
He explained that the General National Congress (parliament) "was the first to revive this concept when it formed the Constitution Drafting Assembly in 2012, based on 60 members, with 20 members from each of Libya's three regions: the west, east and south.
"This step represented a dangerous turning point because it gradually laid the foundations for the logic of geographical quotas, which came to govern the distribution of political and administrative positions and centres of influence within the state," al-Tabbal said. Article translated from Arabic by Afrah Almatwari. To read the original, click here .