Chapter 8, Part 5: Social Issues

Section Two
Social Issues

Many were the social issues to which Rushdi al-Kikhya gave his attention during this term. In shedding a gentle light on them, we do not mean that they were the only ones he dealt with as a deputy, or that they were new. A deputy speaks in the plenary session, debates in the parliamentary committees, submits proposals and comments on bills put forward by the government.. and finally he holds the government to account and watches over the integrity of officials. And he monitors the spending of public money.

Below are the most prominent issues on which Rushdi al-Kikhya pressed more than on any others in this field:

1. The Multiplicity of School Types

Under the mandate there were several kinds of schools in Syria: government schools, schools belonging to the religious communities, and foreign schools, secular and missionary.. Because of this multiplicity and the differences in direction and aims, the country's youth were divided in their leanings, far apart in their thinking and at odds in their political and social outlook. This painful matter cut Rushdi deeply, and he set out to deal with it, returning to it again and again because of the importance he attached to unifying the culture of the country's sons, while preserving for each community the essentials of its faith. His aim was for the state to lay down unified curricula for all schools, so as to unify ways of thinking, and to exercise proper supervision over what the private and foreign schools taught, so that they would plant in the rising generations a love of their Arabism and reverence for their national belonging. In one of his speeches he said:

"I demand that the schools have a unified curriculum, drawn from the history of this people and from its needs, morals and customs.. A nation that has no unified cultural program cannot be destined to live. Education must have a program that covers all classes and all elements, and covers all schools, government and non-government, so that we can produce a young generation with a unified culture and a unified upbringing as well. In this way we can build this independence on strong foundations.."

He repeated this a few months later to sound the alarm.[1]

2. Combating Class Disparity

I have pointed out more than once that Rushdi al-Kikhya was not at ease with the social confusion in which the country was floundering. He strove hard to establish a reasonable balance between the social strata, so unequal in standing and in the way they were regarded, and to put an end to the abuse of some by others, even though he himself grew up in a wealthy milieu close to power. To build a society founded on justice and equality, it was necessary to begin by abolishing the inherited privileges drawn from what people called "family rights".. So in this period his attention focused on the following matters, which he saw as a basic condition for building the virtuous society:

A. Equality among People

Rushdi al-Kikhya believed deeply in real equality among citizens, not the theoretical equality the constitution contains as an abstract article written on paper. He could not accept the idea, for example, of requiring the sons of the common people to do military service without their and their fathers' having all the rights the laws provide, in deed and not in word, and without any discrimination.. in application of the famous legal maxim "liability goes with gain".

To shed light on this equality, he said:

"If the one who does good and the one who does wrong are treated alike.. the morals of the people decline, and that vitality without which no nation can live dies. Anyone who wrongs this nation must receive strict punishment, regardless of the considerations that surround him. We want to rid ourselves of the social diseases of the past, which were a germ threatening our vitality and limiting our energy and strength, namely sectarian, regional, communal and family partisanship and the other inherited social diseases."[2]

B. The Demand to Limit Land Ownership

In those days no one, apart from a few intellectuals and some radicals, imagined that the feudal landlords' grip on agricultural land would be the fuse of a great explosion whose elements were brewing in the bowels of a diseased present.

Remarkably, this subject claimed his attention, and he set it out clearly at the session of the Chamber of Deputies devoted to debating the cabinet's statement. Naturally, the speech was not welcomed. But al-Kikhya held firm to his view, until one day he was able to impose it in the 1950 constitution, when he became president of the Constituent Assembly that approved it.

C. The Issues of Workers and Peasants

He described the workers as wretched people with no protection and no legislation to safeguard their rights, although they made up 80% of the population of the cities. It was the government's duty above all to work by every means to protect them from the greed of the covetous. He said the same of the peasants, "because in their life is the life of the country, and in their death its death".

No one can dispute that these two strata of society were exposed to exploitation by employers and feudal landlords. As long as they were not treated fairly, the danger to the safety of the homeland would continue, because the explosion was bound to come sooner or later. He was keen to see justice done and to avoid class struggle, as long as it could be avoided.[3]

He was a supporter of drawing up "a comprehensive program for agriculture, to raise it up on studied scientific foundations".

D. The Condition of Civil Servants

Rushdi al-Kikhya and the People's Party had a particular view of civil servants, as the face of the state and the apparatus that watches over the comfort of citizens, looks after their interests and safeguards their security.

He called for justice for the junior officials and for raising their standard of living. To obtain justice for them he attacked "this class disparity among them.. We are no longer in the Middle Ages.. The junior official cannot be content with food and drink, because he has to educate his children and live in a house that meets all the conditions of health."[4]

Indeed, these rights should extend so that "every poor individual in society" receives his share of them, "because he has the right to live like others".[5]

Naturally, these social rights can only be achieved if the state treasury is full. And the treasury can only be full if the burdens are just and divided fairly among those able to bear them.. It is not right for tax to be deducted from an official's salary before he receives it, small as the salary is, while the moneyed classes slip out of it, sometimes by trickery and at other times by corrupting the consciences of the weak-willed in the finance apparatus.

Al-Kikhya was therefore right to insist that the tax system in the country be just, treating people equally, not in blind proportion but in sacrifice.. On this subject he said: "In the matter of taxes we must not follow class rules, and it is not right to give the rich what is not given to the poor.."[6]

Justice among civil servants requires two things:

First, rejecting the principle of advancing (promoting) officials on the basis of kinship and politics.

Second, abolishing Article 85 of the Basic Law on Civil Servants, which gave the Council of Ministers the right to dismiss officials without stating the reasons for the dismissal.[7]

In return for guaranteeing a decent standard of living for civil servants, he demanded that they carry out their duties in full, and he called on the state "to punish the administrative officials, especially in the villages, for their abuses against the citizens".[8] He started from a clear idea: the official is a "servant" of the state, which pays him his salary at the end of every month and looks after him in old age when he retires. The salary, like the pension, is collected in the form of taxes or fees from the citizens' pockets, so the official must work in his post solely for the good of the state and of the citizens, equally among them. It follows that he has no business working in party politics and using his post for the party's benefit, because the party does not pay his salary, and because he must not have two loyalties: loyalty to the law by which the state is run, and loyalty to the party he belongs to. He therefore called for civil servants to be forbidden to join political parties and barred from practical politics.[9]

We, his brothers in the party, adopted this principle out of conviction, and we still adopt it today. For my part, I submitted a bill to the Chamber of Deputies in 1951 (when I was Minister of Education and saw the harm done to the values of education by teachers and instructors joining parties) to forbid such membership. But I withdrew the bill for reasons imposed by the circumstances of those days.. and I remain convinced that this ban is right.

I have often heard it said that the principle of forbidding civil servants to engage in politics is unjust, because it deprives them of exercising their right to take part in running their country. This is a statement that is mercy on the outside and torment within. Forbidding membership of a party is something other than exercising political rights, which no one would think of disputing, because they are a natural and democratic right, and the constitution itself provides for them.. But there is a difference between joining a political party, swearing an oath to obey it and be loyal to it and carrying out its decisions.. and reading the newspapers, discussing public questions and going to the ballot box to elect the person or body the official considers best suited to realize his views on public affairs.. This is the legitimate contribution to the exercise of lawful constitutional rights.

This is what Rushdi al-Kikhya expressed clearly when he said:

"Working in politics is not the same as thinking about it."

Endnotes:

[1] Minutes of the session of 30 October 1944, p. 311.

[2] Session of 9 April 1945, p. 45.

[3] Session of 9 April 1945, p. 94.

[4] Session of 18 May 1944.

[5] Session of 21 May 1946, p. 126.

[6] Session of 10 May 1947, p. 185.

[7] Session of 28 December 1944, p. 451.
Dismissal (tasrih) means removal from service. God Almighty said: "... then either retain them on reasonable terms or release them (tasrih) with kindness..." [al-Baqara: 229].

[8] Session of 16 January 1945, p. 28.

[9] Session of 28 December 1944, p. 451. This was before the French evacuated the country.