Preparing for the Front’s congress, Brahim Ghali sets a committee with influential names

The Polisario Front is planning to hold, by the end of the year, a new congress. The meeting will be a decisive one for Brahim Ghali. The latter wants to be «reelected» for a second term as leader of the movement. A few months before the primordial conference, Ghali is already preparing for it.

The Front’s Secretary-General has set up a 27-member «committee» to create a «roadmap» for the upcoming congress. This committee is, mainly, composed of powerful and influential members from the camps who have held «senior positions» in the Front in the past.

The committee is composed of names that are known to the Moroccan public : Hama Salama, «the head of the Secretariat of the Political Organization of Front», Khatri Addouh «chairman of the Saharawi National Council», Bachir Mustapha Sayed, Abdelkader Taleb Omar, Abdellah Lahbib the Front’s «Defense Minister» and his predecessor Mohamed Lamine El Bouhali.

The Front’s «Prime Minister» and Aminatou Haidar

Younger political figures in the camps were not invited to take part in the committee’s round-table, including the «opposition», embodied by the Sahrawi Initiative for Change (SIC). The movement’s leaders, Haj Ahmed, Ouallad Sellam and Hdiah Abouiha were also snubbed.

In a communiqué, the Saharwi Initiative for Change criticized the way in which the committee was convened. According to them, the body is composed of controversial names. SIC denounced that, indicating that the «methods and policies» that were followed to chose the committee’s members are based on «tribalism».

The presidents of pro-Polisario associations in the Sahara were also neglected by the Front when getting ready for the congress. Neither Aminatou Haidar, the president of the Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders (CODESA), nor Brahim Dahan, head of the Sahrawi Association of Victims of Grave Violations of Human Rights (ASVDH) are on the Committee’s list.

It is clear that the next congress would hardly be an exception. The person to be elected is already known unless the Algerian «Hirak» launched against the 5th term of Bouteflika misses up with Brahim Ghali’s cards.