He will remain in office for another three years after obtaining 69% of the vote.
The leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Gali, was re-elected this Friday as general secretary of the Saharawi movement and president of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Gali, who will remain in office for a period of three years, obtained 1,253 votes, representing 69% of the total, while his rival, Bashir Mustafa, garnered 31% of the votes, according to Saharawi television.
The vote took place within the framework of a congress that was held in the city of Dakhla, attended by more than 2,000 delegates, to decide “the future of the Saharawi cause” and establish the priorities of the movement, including the composition of the Secretariat and the election of the Secretary General, the highest authority of the Polisario.
The rapporteur of the Electoral Commission, Mohamed Mohamed Ismail, stressed that the body did not register violations or obstacles that prevent congressmen from fulfilling their electoral duty, according to the SPS news agency. For his part, the Polisario delegate for Spain, Abdullah Arabi, appreciated that the congress comes at a “decisive” stage in the fight towards the decolonization of Western Sahara, especially “after the violation of the ceasefire by Morocco, that has forced the Saharawi people to resume the armed struggle,” according to a Polisario statement.
Ghali, born in Smara on August 19, 1949, was elected Secretary General of the Polisario in 2016 after the death of Mohamed Abdelaziz after almost 40 years in office. Among his positions, he was minister of the occupied territories from 1998 to 1999 and representative of the Polisario in Spain between 1999 and 2008.
The former Spanish colony of Western Sahara was occupied by Morocco in 1975 despite resistance from the Polisario Front, with whom it remained at war until 1991, when both parties signed a ceasefire with a view to holding a self-determination referendum, but the differences on the elaboration of the census and the inclusion or not of the Moroccan settlers have prevented its call up to now.
end of ceasefire
On November 14, 2020, the Polisario Front declared the ceasefire with Morocco broken in response to a Moroccan military action against Saharawi activists in Guerguerat, in the agreed demilitarized zone, which meant for the Saharawis a violation of the conditions of the Stop the fire.
The latest setback for the Sahrawi independentistas has been the support of the Spanish government for the Moroccan autonomy plan made public on March 18 in a letter addressed to the Alaouite king, Mohamed VI, a change of position described as treason by the Polisario Front, which remember that Spain is still ‘de jure’ the administering power of Western Sahara.
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