Continental Congress Redux

NYT:  Braving Pangs of Violence, Voters Try to Reshape Libya

The Guardian:  Libya elections:  polling stations raids mar first vote since Gaddafi's death

Today Libya had their first democratic election since 1964.  There was some trepidation on the part of the peoples of Eastern Libya who were afraid of being dominated by the people of the more populous cities around Tripoli.  Despite some election related violence in the East it seems to have been very successful.  In the aftermath of Gaddafi's downfall there were a lot of questions about the devotion of the triumphant militias to the rule of law and democracy - so this is a huge step in the right direction.  What I found most interesting was this

"NYT:  The vote will select a 200 member congress that was initially expected to govern the country for 18 months while it drafted a constitution. But attempting to placate the protests of Easterners that the congress would be stacked in favor of the more populous West around Tripoli — about 100 members will be elected from the West, 60 from the East, and 40 from the desert South — the interim Transitional National Council stripped the congress of its authority over the constitution just two days before the vote. Instead the council decreed a new election to choose a smaller panel to draft the constitution that would be composed of equal numbers from each region"

You could consider a model in which each of the regions has the right to either accept the final constitution which they had some part in drafting or go it alone - and potentially have no voice in drafting.  So having proportional representation when drafting a constitution is not necessarily in the best interest of getting an agreement - as lesser represented areas always have the option of not signing.   The Eastern Libyans who felt dominated by the Westerners under Gaddafi may not be anxious to sign on to a strong central government.  See here and here.  That sounds reminiscent of the debate between the US Federalists (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay) and the US Anti-Federalists (Patrick Henry, George Mason, George "not P-Funk" Clinton, and Thomas Jefferson to some degree) in the drafting of the US Constitution.  Of course unlike the drafting of the US Constitution I suspect that one other major issue in the Libyan constitution will be how to divide the oil revenues which appear to be generated primarily in the South and East of the country.