"We certainly did not expect the results, but... our future is certainly better than our present and our past," said Sami al-Saadi, the former ideologue of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and the founder of the political party al-Umma al-Wasat, which finished third in Central Tripoli during Libya's recent parliamentary election. The man whom Taliban leader Mullah Omar once called the "Sheikh of the Arabs", and who authored the LIFG's anti-democracy manifesto The Choice is Theirs, accepted the apparent victory of Libya's more liberal forces.
Indeed, the results raised eyebrows, even among those analysts who did not expect an Islamist landslide. In the electoral district that includes Derna, commonly viewed as an Islamist stronghold, the liberal-leaning National Forces Coalition (NFC), a grouping of more than 60 parties and hundreds of local civil-society organisations, won 59,769 votes, while the Justice and Construction Party (JCP) of the Muslim Brothers (MB) received only 8,619. The liberal-leaning Central National Trend (CNT) finished third, with 4,962 votes.
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