Rabat – Peru’s Foreign Affairs Minister Miguel Angel Rodriguez announced on Friday his resignation from the government after President Pedro Castillo tweeted his support of the Polisario Front, suggesting notable fractures within the Peruvian political establishment over the complex Western Sahara question.
“I am writing to you to submit my irrevocable resignation from the position of Minister of State in the Office of Foreign Relations,” Rodriguez wrote in a letter.
Citing tensions between him and the president, he appeared to argue that the president’s tweet undermined his goal to revitalize “Peru’s foreign policy, correct mistakes and try to strengthen the course of our country’s international life.”
The resignation followed a tweet from Peru’s President Castillo, who expressed support for the Polisario Front less than a month after the country’s government announced its decision to withdraw its recognition of the separatist front’s self proclaimed sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in southern Morocco.
The decision followed discussion between the now former Peruvian foreign minister Angel Rodriguez and his Moroccan counterpart Nasser Bourita.
As well as notifying the UN of the withdrawal of its recognition from Polisario’s self-styled state, the Peruvian Foreign Affairs Ministry expressed the Latin American country’s determination to strengthen bilateral ties with Morocco through a multi sectoral roadmap that was set to include more active and closer cooperation in different fields.
But President Castillo, widely considered to be a revolutionary leftist, went against Peruvian diplomacy’s hard-fought, elaborate Western Sahara diplomacy by tweeting his well-known ideological support for the Polisario Front, the self-described revolutionary militia claiming independence in Morocco’s southern provinces.
“One year after establishing diplomatic relations with the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, we reaffirm ourselves in persisting in the defense of its sovereign self-determination,” said President Castillo’s tweet.
Peru’s constantly changing Sahara stance
As well as upending his country’s barely month-old decision to distance itself from any recognition of or support for the Polisario Front, the president’s statement pointed to the widening fractures within his country’s over the Western Sahara question.
Peru first froze diplomatic relations with the Polisario Front in 1999, ending what was then a 15-year support for the separatist group. Relations with Morocco considerably improved as a result, with Peru gradually becoming in the past two decades one of Latin America’s strongest advocates of the Moroccanness of the Sahara.
However, last year’s election of Pedro Castillo, a former unionist with radical leftist politics, raised alarms among Peru’s seasoned diplomatic class about the sustainability of the country’s efforts to forge good relations with Morocco.
In September of last year, less than three months after President Castillo assumed office, Peru restored relations with Polisario. However, the country’s Congress rejected the decision and summoned the Foreign Minister for a hearing over what it described as the government’s perceived efforts to “create geopolitical instability.”
While the Peruvian Congress’ near-unanimous rejection of President Castillo’s unilateral decision to recognize Polisario was crucial in the country’s Foreign Ministry’s decision to “correct the mistake” last month, the president’s latest tweet indicates his determination to follow a radically leftist diplomacy.
Meanwhile, how Morocco responds to this saga of Peru’s endlessly evolving Western Sahara stance remains to be seen.
