The Movement Saharawi for Peace (MSP) has come out against what it considers "fake news" launched by the official Algerian press agency which affects the organisation itself, which also pointed out that all this shows the "state of unease" which the leadership of the Polisario Front is going through.
In an official statement, the MSP offered to talk with the Algerian authorities to present its project for Western Sahara.
The official statement of the MSP is reproduced below:
The official Algerian news agency (APS) has published on Sunday, 12 June, a dispatch in which it reproduces passages from an alleged report of the Spanish intelligence services (CNI) which appeared on the portal "El Público" and which contains hardly credible slander against the newly founded Movement Saharawi for Peace (MSP).
The APS, known for its "exquisite caution" and "calculated slowness" as the government's official spokesperson, has this time been hasty in adopting "speculation" of dubious authenticity attributed to a Western intelligence service that until yesterday was not a favourite of the Algerian authorities.
It is clear that this slip by the APS agency reflects the state of alarm and concern of the Polisario leadership, and probably of the Algerian authorities, at the rise of the MSP, an emerging Saharawi political force which, thanks to its moderate and realistic discourse, has managed in a short time to establish itself in Saharawi and international opinion and become a potential interlocutor in the peace talks under the auspices of the UN. Algeria is concerned, and rightly so, that it has gambled for five decades on a "losing horse", mortgaging its interests for a totalitarian organisation that is adrift and in full decline.
This is the first time that the official Algerian news agency has referred to the MSP, and it has entered the internal Saharawi debate by establishing a position that is far from impartial on the part of the Algerian government. However, it omitted to mention the letter that the leadership of the new movement sent on 13 May 2020, barely a month after its formation, to the Algerian Minister of Foreign Affairs. The leaders of the new movement fulfilled the duty and courtesy of informing the government, which claims to be committed to the self-determination of the Saharawi people, explaining the reasons why hundreds of civilian and military cadres militant until then in the Polisario decided to create a new political force after exhausting all avenues to promote the required changes from within.
In the letter, the objectives of the movement were underlined as the promotion of the culture of multipartyism and democratic freedoms among Saharawi society, as well as the contribution to the peaceful solution of the problem of Western Sahara.
With this initiative, the MSP wanted to invoke the democratic experience of Algeria and its success in getting rid of the one-party system in the hope that it would serve as an example for the leadership of the old Tindouf-based movement to correct its totalitarian model and learn to coexist with other opinions and political currents. For the fate of the Saharawi people, after the fifty-year adventure, cannot continue to depend on the fate of a political grouping whose track record has more mistakes than successes and less light than shadow.
The Algerian state must accept, for the good of the Saharawis and its own interests, that the Polisario is no longer the "sole and legitimate" representative of the Saharawi people, perhaps it never was because such excellence is a chimera even in the most perfect democracies and because, moreover, its unjustifiable excesses in Tindouf have caused it to lose credibility and trust among the Saharawi population. It is therefore time to persuade the Polisario leadership to clean up a past full of crimes and adhere to the values of freedom, tolerance and democracy if it wants to be a part of, and not a hindrance to, the peaceful solution called for by the international community.
Contrary to the "fake news" propagated by some Spanish media and journalists sympathetic to the Polisario, the MSP categorically denies being a "front" for any intelligence agency, nor for any government.
Convinced of the importance of Algeria and its influence in the regional context, the Political Directorate of the MSP reiterates once again its willingness to open channels of dialogue with the authorities of this neighbouring country to set out, without intermediaries, its political project which consists of promoting a compromise solution and the Saharawis ceasing to be the "bone of contention" between Algeria and Morocco. Likewise, to define points of convergence from its indisputable condition as an interested and co-responsible party, together with Morocco, Mauritania and the former metropolis, Spain, for the sake of the peaceful solution of the problem of Western Sahara and the restoration of peace, stability and prosperity in our Arab Maghreb.
Press Committee.
