Appendix 10, Part 8: Mourning Rushdi al-Kikhya: Muti al-Nounou on His Political Life

And Muti al-Nounou wrote the following in the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat on 13/6/1988, under these headlines:

"Rushdi al-Kikhya, the Syrian leader who gave his life to his country and was then buried in Cyprus." Among his political positions: his call for Arab federation and his firm opposition to every interference in constitutional life.

In the first installment I spoke of the death of the great Syrian leader Rushdi Kikhya in Cyprus, of the reasons for his burial there, of his strength and political firmness, of how he bore shocks of every kind, and of how he won the respect of everyone, even of his socialist and communist political opponents. In this second and final installment I speak of his political beginnings in the National Bloc, then of his founding of the People's Party, and of his patriotic positions in government or when he was leading the ranks of the opposition.

I used to meet the late Speaker al-Kikhya in Damascus, when he was in government or leading the ranks of the opposition, and he was always marked by sobriety and clean language, by fair criticism and by rising above personal interests.

When he was forced to emigrate from his homeland and live in Lebanon, my meetings with him began again, at the hotel he chose on the seafront in Beirut: the International Hotel, one of the beautiful hotels of the Lebanese capital, though it is rubble now, smashed by the rockets and shells that the warring Lebanese trade in the north and the south, caring nothing for whom they kill or what they wreck and destroy!

Around the Syrian leader one circle gathered in the morning and another in the evening, attended by a number of his many brothers, who talked together and listened to his memories of the past and his views on political conditions and changes. God rest him, he sometimes visited the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and stayed for a while in Riyadh or Jeddah, and a circle like the ones in Beirut would gather round him there. When the security situation in Lebanon deteriorated, al-Kikhya chose the Cypriot city of Limassol as his new home because it was close to Lebanon; it is a pleasant town where a good number of Syrians and Arabs spend the hot months, and so the circles around the Syrian leader formed again every day. My last meeting with the departed al-Kikhya was in the summer of 1986 in the city of Limassol. God rest him, he kept me as his guest for a whole week, and every day he invited me to eat in a different place in the city. The talk of the leader al-Kikhya, a man who had lived through a long era of political work, turned on legitimacy and democracy, the two goals he always worked to achieve. God rest him, he was a distinctive personality, notable for his political cleanness and purity. I asked him again and again to record his memoirs, because these memoirs are a right that belongs to the Arab generations, and his answer was: What shall I say? And is there anyone in our Arab world who listens?

And is there anyone in our Arab world who reads? And is there any use in what I say?

It was as if, God rest him, he was alluding to what the poet said:

The frog spoke a saying
that the wise explained:
There is water in my mouth, and how
can one with water in his mouth speak?

And now.. the account of the late Syrian leader is very long, and setting it down could fill many volumes.

How He Began in National Work

God rest him, he worked for a long time in the ranks of the National Bloc in Syria, and al-Kikhya put all his abilities and energy into the service of national work. His gifts drew many of the members, since he was seen as an example to follow for the clarity of his conscience and the soundness of his thinking. In 1932 he took part in a conference the National Bloc held in Homs on the fourth of November (Tishreen al-Thani), and the Bloc came to have branches in most Syrian regions, after it had gathered intelligent, young and educated people of real weight in the fields of action and thought, people who had borne the pains of prison, banishment and the damage done to their personal interests. The leaders of the "National Bloc" stood in the front ranks and walked at the head of the processions and demonstrations, and they took the first blows, which is why the people became attached to them and trusted their sincerity, since the aim in founding the National Bloc was to free the Arab lands separated from the Ottoman state from all foreign authority, to bring them to complete independence and full sovereignty, and to gather their divided territories into a state with a single government.. on condition that Lebanon, which had been carved off together with its four districts at the time, keep the right to determine its own fate within its old borders.

Another of the National Bloc's aims was to coordinate its efforts with the work under way in the other Arab countries to secure union between those countries, provided that this effort did not stand in the way of the goals that had to be reached in each country, while securing freedom and equal rights and duties among all members of the people, whatever their sects, raising the level of social and economic life, spreading education, and instilling national morals in all classes, while developing and nourishing them.

The National Bloc considers the whole nation, with all its moral and material strength, to be dedicated to this national struggle until it reaches its goals, and it is a duty to gather the nation's forces and direct their efforts toward realizing national hopes; for this reason the National Bloc regards the formation of political parties as a breach of the unity of effort.

The Bloc's aims laid down that these principles were not to be touched or amended, since they were fundamental to the life of the nation and to the existence of the National Bloc, and that any breach of them cost the person responsible his right to membership.

Starting from these principles, clear in plan and in action, the name of the young politician Rushdi al-Kikhya came to the fore, as a man who believed firmly in national principles and worked for them, and he was elected a member of the council of the National Bloc, one of the 28 figures who made up the council, among them: Ibrahim Hananu, Saadallah al-Jabiri, Hashim al-Atassi, Shukri al-Quwatli, Lutfi al-Haffar, Nazim al-Qudsi, Faris al-Khouri, Fakhri al-Barudi, Mikhail Ilyan, Abd al-Rahman al-Kayyali, Nasib al-Bakri, Ahmad al-Lahham, Afif al-Solh, Jamil Mardam Bey, Najib al-Rayyis, Abd al-Qadir Shuraytih, Nuri al-Futayyih, Sulayman al-Ma'sarani, Ihsan al-Sharif, Naim Antaki, Edmond Rabbath, Dr. Tawfiq al-Shishakli, Mazhar Raslan and others.

The Bloc dominated the fields of political and popular action for ten years, from 1926 to 1936. In 1935 the Syrian lands were struck by the death of the great leader Ibrahim Hananu after his long illness; he was laid to rest in the city of Aleppo, and his funeral was followed by huge crowds of delegations numbering more than 150 thousand people, representing all the Syrian cities and the Arab countries, since he was the first of the National Bloc's founders, and he had led a revolt against the colonizer in the Aleppo region that was called the "Hananu Revolt".

In 1936 the first split in the National Bloc occurred, when President Shukri al-Quwatli resigned from his two ministerial posts, finance and defense. Time passed, and the National Bloc no longer held together as it once had; its men drifted apart because of mistakes made by some of its leaders.

The leader al-Kikhya's commitment to the ideal principles of the National Bloc only grew, and he worked within their bounds, which is why he won in every round of parliamentary elections in the city of Aleppo al-Shahba, and he in turn began to rise to prominence in the city and in the other Syrian cities.

In 1943, two years before the French forces evacuated Syria, the politician Rushdi al-Kikhya went at the head of a delegation from Aleppo to the capital, Damascus, and met President Shukri al-Quwatli in an attempt to restore harmony among the patriotic men, out of concern for the country's interest, but these efforts did not achieve the goal they sought.

It was then that al-Kikhya thought of founding the People's Party, and he gathered some members who were of one mind with him, while Dr. Abd al-Rahman al-Kayyali, also an Aleppo leader, formed the National Party, and each party, the two of them being the heirs of the National Bloc, set about gathering politicians into its ranks to work within it.

His Defense of the Press and of Liberties

Among al-Kikhya's political positions and his defense of public liberties: in 1945 Ahmad Qanbar, owner of the newspaper al-Nadhir, which was published in Aleppo as the mouthpiece of the People's Party, was assaulted, and al-Kikhya sent a strongly worded telegram to the government denouncing the incident and demanding that people's rights be protected and their freedoms, guaranteed by the constitution, be secured.

In 1947 parliamentary elections were held in Syria, the first parliamentary elections of the independence era, and in the city of Aleppo itself four electoral lists were formed. The first list was headed by Rushdi al-Kikhya, and al-Kikhya won, together with several deputies of his party: Dr. Nazim al-Qudsi, the judge Mustafa Barmada[1], Dr. AbdulWahab Homad, Latif Ghanima, Maarouf al-Dawalibi and Ahmad Qanbar.

When the first military coup in Syria took place, on 30 March 1949, led by Husni al-Za'im, the People's Party under al-Kikhya's leadership declined to take part in the first cabinet formed in the country after the coup, although Husni al-Za'im had chosen Faydi al-Atassi, a prominent member of the People's Party, to join the cabinet; but al-Atassi declined the post in keeping with the decision of his party, led by al-Kikhya, and Husni al-Za'im then issued a decree dissolving the political parties.

Hardly more than three months had passed since al-Za'im's coup when the second coup took place, on 14 August 1949, led by Sami al-Hinnawi. The Syrian cabinet was formed under Hashim al-Atassi, and al-Kikhya was chosen to take the Ministry of the Interior, because of his known integrity and complete neutrality, and to supervise the parliamentary elections. He accepted the post once he was convinced that the military leaders were sincere and that their intentions to return the country to constitutional life were good.

In truth it must be said that these elections, which al-Kikhya supervised, were exemplary in their fairness: he appointed special inspection committees to tour the polling stations in the towns and the countryside so that no one, however strong his influence, could interfere in these elections, even if the one interfering was a member of the People's Party or one of its ministers. To give an example, a prominent member of the People's Party in the city of Homs called on the city's governor in an attempt to have him intervene in his favor, but the governor received the minister like any other candidate and left him sitting in his office for a long time without paying him attention or speaking to him. When Minister Kikhya learned of the incident, he called the governor and thanked him for his stand and his neutrality.

114 deputies won in these elections, and the winners were named members of the Constituent Assembly that was to draw up the country's constitution. Al-Kikhya was elected president of this assembly, and Hashim al-Atassi was elected provisional head of the Syrian state. Al-Kikhya took part in the committee formed from the Constituent Assembly to redraft the constitution, after the leader of the coup, Sami Hinnawi, had announced that the army would not interfere in political affairs.

Among his political positions that Syrian history has recorded: in 1955 he threw the weight of his party behind getting President Shukri al-Quwatli elected to the presidency of the republic against his rival of the time, Khalid al-Azm. Al-Kikhya backed al-Quwatli's candidacy with complete frankness and clarity, a stand for which he deserves thanks, even though the left-wing parties and groups that supported al-Azm and were fighting al-Quwatli's election had offered al-Kikhya the possibility of standing for the presidency himself. He declined the offer, and they then offered to let him choose whomever he wanted from his party's members for the post, on condition that these left-wing groups would vote for that person and that he would stop backing al-Quwatli. But al-Kikhya rejected all the offers and declared his commitment to the decision to support al-Quwatli, and so al-Quwatli was elected by an absolute majority: Shukri al-Quwatli won 91 votes out of 149 deputies, Khalid al-Azm won 41 votes, 4 ballots were blank and three were declared invalid.

Speaker al-Kikhya shunned every office, however high its rank; he refused the presidency of the Syrian republic more than once because of his idealism and his integrity. He held fast to the high principles that bring the Arab states together in a single crucible, and he was among the strongest advocates of Arab federation while keeping the republican system in Syria, along the lines of the Gulf Cooperation Council, formed eight years ago, which brought together the six Gulf states without touching the sovereignty of any of them. And he held fast to the high principles that could bring the Arab states together within a single political framework to resist the Israeli occupation.

Although his positions did not support the policy of President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the days of the Syrian-Egyptian union, he was for the continuation of that union, because in his view it was a truth that individuals pass away in this perishing world, but what matters is that Arab solidarity should endure so that we can face the enemies who have torn the homeland apart and stabbed our struggle to the heart.

God rest him, he worked to unite the efforts of Syrian politicians and to form national cabinets that included all the parties, from inside and outside the Chamber of Deputies, without any single party monopolizing power, and with a strong program for the cabinet.

In 1951, in the time of Adib al-Shishakli, al-Kikhya resigned as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. The whole Chamber, together with the government then headed by Khalid al-Azm, declared that it rejected al-Kikhya's resignation from the Speakership, which he had held with merit and deserved. Prime Minister al-Azm in turn begged Speaker al-Kikhya to answer this request, which came from conviction and affection.

Al-Kikhya then replied, thanking the Prime Minister and his fellow deputies, and said: The matter goes to the very heart of parliamentary life in this country, so I ask my brothers, and the office of the Speaker of the Chamber, to give me some time; if I manage to reach a fruitful result that safeguards the public interest and upholds the provisions of the constitution, I will then be happy to be Speaker of this Chamber, or a member, or even one of its humblest employees.. But if I cannot reach a satisfactory result, then farewell to the Speakership, to the deputyship and to parliamentary life in this country.

After this stand that the leader al-Kikhya took against the military authorities' overstepping and their interference in constitutional life, Adib al-Shishakli issued a decree dissolving the Chamber of Deputies and suspending constitutional life, and issued several military communiqués by which he took the powers of state into his own hands. Al-Shishakli pretended to have no appetite for power, but in truth and in fact he was eager to reach the presidency of the republic, and he was elected to that office in July 1953.

President al-Shishakli also ordered the arrest of a large number of political and party figures, and the prisons filled with them, foremost among them Rushdi al-Kikhya. But al-Shishakli's rule lasted until the twenty-fourth of February 1954, the day a military coup broke out in the city of Aleppo; al-Shishakli's regime was overthrown, all the political detainees were released, and it was decided to return President Hashim al-Atassi to the presidency of the republic, in accordance with the resolutions of the Homs conference.

On 28 September 1961, the day of the secession that broke up the Syrian-Egyptian union and returned the Syrian political entity to its former state under the republican system, Speaker al-Kikhya refused to accept the presidency of the republic, and in the face of the insistence of the political parties and the parliamentary blocs, the People's Party decided to put forward Dr. Nazim al-Qudsi, as one of the party's prominent members. He won with the votes of a large majority of the deputies, and afterward Dr. al-Qudsi chose Khalid al-Azm to form the cabinet. The secession era lasted until the eighth of March 1963, when the Baath Party took power in the country.

Endnotes:

[1] The eminent judge Mustafa Barmada won in these elections, but he was not on Rushdi al-Kikhya's list. (The author)