Fears over the death of the leader of the Polisario: Algiers Shivers

PERSISMA – His health being at the lowest, Brahim Ghali is to have been transferred Saturday to a hospital in Algiers. The regime of the eastern neighbor of Morocco fears the worst.

In Algiers, the mobilization of the presidency and the intelligence services is at its height for a reason. The health of Brahim Ghali, the Polisario leader and so-called president of the pseudo Sahrawi Republic (SADR), abruptly deteriorated this Saturday, September 15 to the point that he was to be transferred any time soon in a hospital in Algiers where he is to be taken care of by the presidency and the intelligence services, all at the same time.

In Algiers, there is a great deal of concern and fear regarding the prospect of a disappearance of the regime’s straw man in the Sahara issue. This eventuality would scatter all the cards that Algeria plays on this register in so far as a succession ready to take over not being in sight.

Ghali’s illness was pointed out several times by his opponents in the Front. It is hepatitis C (HCV) that has reached a very advanced stage and has already resulted in cirrhosis of the liver. The information about his physical inability had blossomed in the aftermath of his election at the head of the polisario Front.

Brahim G hali was ‘elected’ Secretary General so to speak of the polisario front, but also president of the proclaimed Sadr in July 2016. This with the Stalinist score of 93.16% of the votes cast. Brahim Ghali then replaced Mohamed Abdelaziz, who died on 31 May of the same year as a result of a long illness.

Brahim Ghali is far not the only one whose health is shaky and falters dangerously. His ‘boss’, Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, is equally wavering between life and death, since his stroke in 2013. Since that date, its appearances are rare, even if the regime wants to keep him artificially alive and in action. Officially justified as part of the regular health checks he undergoes, his transfer at the end of August follows other considerations.

From reliable sources, we learn that the real purpose of this move is to boost the president and give him a minimum of speech and traction in the perspective of two important dates.

The first was the planned visit to Algiers, Monday 17 September, by German chancellor Angela Merkel. It is of course a question of a meeting between the two heads of state. As a first-rate economic partner, Berlin is also the largest supplier of arms to Algeria on a global scale. It is recalled that in February 2017, a move of Merkel to this country had to be cancelled at the last minute due to a “severe bronchitis” of Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 81 years.

The second is the almost certain candidacy of the Algerian president for a fifth mandate which he will have to announce in person otherwise it will be the one false too much.