Pedro Sánchez's failure in Rabat

The meetings organised by the leadership of the Socialist International in Rabat this past week have ended in an unmitigated failure for the multinational organisation of social democrats chaired by Pedro Sánchez, president of the Spanish Executive and secretary general of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party). 

Morocco's Royal Palace has ignored the conclave. While it is true that, from a strictly protocol point of view, this was a political congress involving a Moroccan party, the USFP (Socialist Union of Popular Forces) and not the state, it was expected that Mohammed VI and his palace entourage would devote some particular attention to the meetings of the Socialist International and the presence of its leaders in the country. In any case, the USFP today is not even a shadow of the powerful party it was from Morocco's independence until well into Mohammed VI's reign, and Pedro Sánchez's gift will not resurrect it. 

In 1982, King Hassan II, father of the current monarch Mohammed VI, received the leadership of the African branch of the Socialist International at the Royal Palace in Rabat. The then President of Senegal, Leopold Sedar Senghor, spoke to the Alawi sovereign about the advisability of counting on the Moroccan Socialists to shape a government of the future. It was not in vain. Years later, Hassan II commissioned Abderrahman Youssoufi, secretary general of the USFP, to form the Moroccan executive at the head of a ‘Government of alternation’, an essential step towards the democratisation of the country. 

Morocco's Royal Palace has never been unaware of the vicissitudes of the Socialist International and its positions, which have evolved from a position of support for the right to self-determination of the people of Western Sahara, a key issue for the North African country, and acceptance of the Polisario Front as a ‘consultative organisation’, to sending a mission of the International chaired by the Spanish socialist Juan Antonio Yáñez-Barnuevo to seek ‘a political solution’ to the Sahara conflict, and to end up ignoring it in its latest meetings, where it no longer even figures as a topic for discussion among the African conflicts, and is ignored in all its resolutions. Moreover, at the meeting of the Commission of the Socialist International of February 2024 in Madrid, a delegation of the Saharawi Movement for Peace (MSP), led by Hach Ahmed Bericalla, former ‘minister and delegate of the Polisario Front in Latin America’, was present, a meeting boycotted by the Polisario, which was also invited. 

This time, at the Commission meeting in Rabat, and at the previous meetings of Women and the African Bureau, the Royal Palace was neither present, nor did it send any message, nor did it receive the members of the leadership, in particular Pedro Sánchez. The Spanish president was received at the airport on his arrival in Rabat by the secretary general of the USFP, the host party of the Socialist International meetings, nothing more. 

The Royal Palace, on the other hand, was very present at the Second National Colloquium on Advanced Regionalisation held at the same time in Tangiers, which was attended by all Moroccan political parties, all their leaders, all the Moroccan state's deliberative and executive bodies, and whose programme of discussions was set by King Mohammed VI himself in a message containing the six main chapters for implementing regionalisation, a key part of the proposal for advanced autonomy formulated by Mohammed VI at the UN, to definitively resolve the Western Sahara dispute.

In the political circles of the Moroccan capital, it was hoped that at least the Spanish president and his hosts from the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) would exert sufficient influence to ensure that the meetings of the Socialist International, especially that of the Commission, would pronounce themselves in support of the Autonomy Plan proposed by Morocco for the Sahara conflict.

It so happens that the only European socialist leader of a certain level, with the exception of Pedro Sánchez, present at the Rabat conclave was Dylan Boutiflat, international secretary of the French Socialist Party, and that Rabat's relations with the PSF are not exactly the best given the support that Olivier Faure's socialists continue to give to the ‘Study Group on Western Sahara’ created in the National Assembly in Paris, which is more favourable to the positions of the Polisario Front than to the Moroccan autonomy proposal.

Nor do the positions declared by Pedro Sánchez in the name of the Socialist International, in favour of launching a real political-ideological crusade ‘against the right’ (lumping liberals, Christian democrats, popular and nationalists together) and supporting tiny African socialist groupings ‘against the military dictatorships’ recently installed in some countries, seem to have been well received.

It is precisely these ‘global right-wingers’ that the Moroccan state and Aziz Akhannouch's government must contend with. It is these ultra-right-wingers (Donald Trump, Giorgia Meloni, Victor Orbán, Geert Wilder, and soon perhaps Marine Le Pen and Alternative for Germany, AfD) that will drive the Western economy in the next five years.

Nor did Pedro Sánchez's African proposals, against the ‘milita dictatorships’ prevailing on the continent, sound very good in the Royal Palace in Rabat.

Morocco proposes to pursue an African policy based on: a geopolitical bloc articulated in coherent regional spaces and a programme of stages of integration. All of this is based on non-interference, particularly in the Sahel countries where military uprisings have taken place, and to which it proposes to jointly organise strategic disengagement and regional cooperation. Public works, development of energy resources, access to the sea for the Sahel countries, Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline. A pragmatic programme, with which Pedro Sánchez and the current Socialist International seem to clash.