Late on 18 July the High National Election Commission (HNEC) held a press conference in Tripoli to announce the full results of the 7 July vote for Libya’s new General National Congress (GNC).

The announcement confirmed that the National Forces Alliance (NFA), a broad coalition headed by Mahmoud Jibril, who held senior economic posts under the Gaddafi regime before playing a prominent political role in last year’s uprising, was the most successful of the parties running in the elections.

The NFA took home 39 of the 80 seats that are allocated to parties in the new assembly. The remaining 120 of the 200 seats are reserved for individual candidates.

The Justice and Construction Party, which campaigned along more religious lines, won the second-highest number of seats (17) in the party category. The Al Watan party, led by Abdelhakim Belhadj, a prominent rebel leader in 2011, did not win any seats in the poll.

Although the NFA holds the single largest number of seats, it nonetheless has direct control over just 19.5% of the new parliament. The affiliation of many of the independent candidates – which still remains unclear – will therefore be the deciding factor in the overall look of the GNC.

The first sitting of the new congress is understood to be planned for 27 July, around a week after the beginning of Ramadan. It is tasked with appointing a Prime Minister within 30 days of its first assembly.