On 4 December, preparations took place for the Commander of the Libyan National Army, Khalifa Haftar, to arrive the following day in Ajdabiya (approximately 150km south of Benghazi). Ahead of Haftar’s arrival, the LNA’s 166 Brigade arrived in the city and transferred a decommissioned MiG-23 from Benina Airport to Ajdabiya as a celebratory monument to the LNA’s ‘victorious’ air force. In a speech given in Ajdabiya on 5 December, Haftar confirmed his commitment to ‘running’ in presidential elections and rejected any ruling that called for the exclusion of military personnel or dual citizens. He condemned those seeking to exclude the military from participating in the electoral process. He claimed that ‘conventional solutions’ devised by politicians have turned out to be ‘a waste of time and effort’ and threatened that, ‘if the military wanted to overthrow the democratic path, no force would have been able to stand in their way’.
