Farouk Batiche/AFP/Getty Images. All rights reserved.Some claim Morocco's 20 February protest movement has largely failed as a transformational social movement capable of articulating an alternative discursive and coherent challenge to the regime. They say that a striking constant feature of the movement was its fragmented centrifugal leadership and horizontal mobilisation.
These observers are correct in claiming the protest movement did not manage to articulate a strong alternative discourse to that of the monarchy, especially in its traditional and religious appeal. However, they fail to correctly assess what they describe as the ideological fissures that amplified the 20 February movement's weakness. Indeed, the fissures are not only those between radical leftist Marxists and the banned Islamist al-Adl wal Ihsane, but also predominantly between the annexationist nationalists (PSU) and the separatist internationalists (pro-Polisario voices), via the Islamist neutralists (AWI). More importantly, the critical fissure is not between diverse philosophical orientations but one between ideologies as such and a strictly pro-democratic politics.
This normative approach to the Western Sahara conflict is largely inspired by the political theory of John Rawls. Since the international community cannot realistically guarantee political self-determination for the Sahrawi population, I argue they should be at least guaranteed maximal political democracy in whatever outcome of the current conflict.
