TRIPOLI, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Libyan Higher Commission for Elections on Thursday announced that the number of Libyan voters registered so far is 1.9 million.
"The number of registered voters in the electoral register after reopening a month ago was 400,000, while the previous number was 1.5 million, meaning that the total number of registered voters so far is 1.9 million," Emas Sayah, Chairman of the Libyan Election Commission told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.
The Commission aims to have 2.5 million registered voters, Sayeh said. He also expected that the number of voters will exceed that "if the registration continues at this rate."
"This number means that any elections or referendum will be credible, and that the bodies that emerge from such process represent a large segment of the Libyan people," Sayeh explained.
He said that the Commission is waiting for the political parties to agree an election law and another law governing the referendum on the draft constitution.
"We will handle a large part of the monitoring of the elections by observers who will be trained by the Commission and they will be deployed to 2,000 polling stations, in addition to the monitoring of international and civil society organizations," Sayeh revealed.
The head of the UN Support Mission in Libya, Ghassan Salame, in September proposed an action plan for Libya that includes amendment of the current UN-sponsored political agreement and holding presidential and parliamentary elections.
The plan aims at ending the current political division the country has been suffering from since the fall of Gaddafi's regime in 2011.
The Mission signed an agreement with the Election Commission in December to provide technical and logistical support for the upcoming elections.
