By Almahdi Hindi, political activist
The announcement of the establishment of the “Central Region Province” has sparked widespread debate across Libya’s political and public spheres. While some view it as a positive step toward enhancing cooperation among municipalities and improving developmental coordination, others regard it as a potential gateway to administrative or political arrangements that could raise concerns about national unity and the future structure of governance in the country.
Yet the focus on the question, “Are we for or against the province?” may have diverted attention from a more important question: Why did this initiative emerge in the first place?
A review of Law No. 59 of 2012 on Local Administration reveals that the Libyan legislator did not design the local governance system around municipalities alone. Rather, it envisioned an integrated structure consisting of three levels: governorates, municipalities, and local districts. The governorate was intended to serve as the link between the central government and municipalities, coordinating projects and services that extend beyond the jurisdiction of any single municipality.
What has happened over the past years, however, is that municipalities have been activated to varying degrees, while the governorate level has remained largely dormant and has never been fully implemented. As a result, municipalities have found themselves confronting challenges and responsibilities that exceed both their capacities and their geographical boundaries, without the presence of an intermediate administrative tier capable of coordinating their efforts or collectively representing their needs before the central government.
Many development and service-related issues simply cannot be managed by a single municipality alone. These include intercity road projects, the management of shared resources, regional development planning, major healthcare services, and other matters that require coordination and cooperation beyond narrow municipal boundaries.
From this perspective, initiatives aimed at fostering cooperation and joint action among municipalities can be understood as practical responses to needs imposed by reality, rather than necessarily as political projects intended to reshape the state or undermine its unity.
At the same time, the concerns expressed by a number of politicians and public affairs observers cannot be dismissed. Some have warned that expanding regional frameworks outside the established legal context could be politically exploited or could encourage demands that might affect the cohesion of the state and the unity of its institutions, particularly given Libya’s exceptional and fragile circumstances.
These concerns deserve serious discussion and careful consideration. However, they should not prevent us from addressing the fundamental questions surrounding the emergence of such initiatives. Treating the symptoms without understanding the underlying causes may simply allow the same problem to reappear in different forms.
Therefore, the key question today may not be whether we support or oppose the idea of a regional entity. Rather, it is why Libya’s local governance system has struggled to evolve into the structure envisioned by law more than a decade ago. Why have governorates—the very institutions intended to provide regional coordination and spatial development planning—remained outside the framework of implementation?
Providing honest answers to these questions may prove far more useful than the ongoing debate about the province itself. At its core, the issue is not the name or form of an administrative structure, but the state’s ability to complete the construction of effective and balanced local governance institutions capable of improving public services, promoting development, and preserving national unity and stability at the same time.
If the recent initiatives have revealed anything, they have highlighted a genuine need for a level of regional coordination that the current local governance framework has so far failed to provide. And therein lies the real challenge that deserves thoughtful discussion and practical solutions.
