Events of 1959: Akram al-Hourani's Attack on Military Spending and the Legislative Unification Committees

The new year began, and the rains were still withheld. We had suffered from this lack of rain since the autumn of the previous year, the Union's first year, and the cultivated fields were crying out with thirst, while the farmers grew increasingly anxious.

For some years now, the capital's grand hotels have organized lavish celebrations on New Year's Eve. Although this occasion is, in origin, one celebrated by our Christian brethren, Muslims have come to take part in it as well, saying: was Jesus not a prophet sent by God, and are we not commanded "not to distinguish between His messengers"?

We chose the Semiramis Hotel for dinner and the New Year's "celebration."

What draws the eye is the swaying of the dancers, most of them Muslims, the greed with which drink is consumed, and the loss of self-control that follows.

It was not for nothing that Islamic law forbade intoxicants.

Some take the liberty of softening the term, calling it "spiritual beverages," and it is regrettable that this very term found its way into certain Syrian laws, in imitation of the French term Spiritueux, a term that our colleague Mr. Mustafa al-Zarqa, professor of Islamic law, considers ugly and objectionable, since these drinks have nothing whatsoever to do with the spirit. He always calls them "alcohol" or intoxicants instead.

At that time, the major cities contained a stratum of society people called "velvet society," made up of overlapping groups: those from circles "cultured" in the Western sense, and those who had amassed great wealth without any real effort, such as the sons of protected companies that feared no competition, or the sons of feudal landlords and "old families." This "velvet society" frequented dance halls and nightclubs, immersing itself in the sweet pleasures of a life the ordinary people had no share in. It is worth noting that the regimes that followed grew ever more tolerant of it, and it grew at an astonishing rate.

Saturday the 3rd

The tripartite committee the President had formed, made up of Abdel Latif Boghdadi and Akram al-Hourani, the two vice presidents, and Zakaria Mohieddin, the central Minister of Interior, arrived today from Cairo, "to attend to the completion of work in the Northern Region."

Its task may well have been to gain a close, firsthand understanding of the true state of affairs in Syria, after the Union's opponents had begun spreading rumors and fabricating stories among the people, with no basis in truth whatsoever.

Among examples of these lies was one claiming that Sayed Marei, the central Minister of Agriculture, had asked the Syrian regional Minister of Agriculture, Ahmad al-Hajj Yunus, while the two were on a mission in Rome, to help him on with his coat, saying to him: "Ahmad, put my coat on me."

The Union's opponents in Syria were emboldened to raise their voices louder by the communist tendency's dominance over the government in Iraq. No one can say for certain whether Abd al-Karim Qasim, who had made himself sole ruler of Iraq, arrested his own colleague Abdul Salam Arif, and become "the sole leader," as the Iraqi press and radio called him, was himself a communist or not, but it is certain that he played the communist card and gave them free rein, to stand against the Nasserist unionist current. It is equally certain that Abd al-Karim Qasim and his associates had taken to persecuting nationalist thinkers, and committing atrocities in the streets with no fear of punishment.

We heard, from those returning from Baghdad, that waves of undisciplined men were stopping cars in the streets and attacking their passengers, chanting:

"No union, no leader but Karim, a republic, not a mere region."

The undeniable reality was that the handling of people's affairs had grown sluggish among us, because of how slowly work was completed in Cairo, since the central Egyptian officials clung tightly to routine, to an excess of required signatures, and to a striking degree of complacency. Whenever we sent certain matters to the capital for signature, they would sleep there for weeks, and sometimes months.

This slowness was made worse by the fact that everything had to be transported by plane, so that the Official Gazette itself might arrive weeks late, and no legislation could take effect until it had been published.

This was a fact confirmed for Boghdadi himself, who complained of it when we had a private conversation on the subject in his office at al-Muhajireen Palace.

Sunday the 4th

The government held two lengthy meetings, chaired by Boghdadi, to discuss the situation in the Northern Region. Each minister explained the state of his own ministry in good detail. I took my turn to speak, and presented the true state of our finances, which was not, in fact, a bad one. Boghdadi was surprised by what I said, and remarked: "In all honesty, the picture I've just heard is different from the one I had of the financial situation."

I had simply reported faithfully what the ministry's own directors had placed before me, in documents and figures, matters they certainly knew better than I did.

We continued these meetings over the following two days, reviewing the state of the country.

Wednesday the 7th

We broke off today's meeting to go to the airport and receive Mr. Grotewohl, Prime Minister of East Germany, and his Foreign Minister, arriving from Cairo.

Their state is considered a friendly one, being part of the (second) communist world, and one to which we owe no small debt for the cost of the weapons with which it has supplied our armed forces.

The ministers presented us with a small typewriter as a gift, which turned out, we later found, to be of rather poor manufacture. After the reception ceremonies, we returned to our ministerial meeting.

Akram al-Hourani then spoke, dropping an unexpected bombshell, quite unlike his usual manner on this particular subject. He launched a harsh attack on the army's own "extravagance," setting out various aspects of waste in its expenditures and its arms procurement, and concluded by insisting that our army must be kept "within the measure of our own resources." Among what he said was that the army consumed nearly 62 percent of the budget, a proportion far beyond our means.

He called for the imposition of strict controls on foreign exchange, that is, on the entry and exit of "hard" foreign currency. Khalil Kallas, the Minister of Economy, supported him in this, perhaps the two of them being in agreement on the matter along party lines, and they were joined by Hassan Jabara, the central Minister of the Treasury.

I objected to imposing such controls, since our borders are extremely long, with Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon, not to mention our border with Israel, and our own security services simply cannot prevent the flow of these currencies, in either direction.

It would, then, be a reckless gamble.

Among the bitter experiences of the drought we were living through was that the Lebanese bought three times more of our sheep than they normally consumed. When we looked into the secret behind this, we learned that merchants in our brotherly neighboring country were buying Syrian sheep and sending them to graze in the lands of the south, under underhanded arrangements with the Zionists, by which Israeli forces would then "seize" these flocks as "spoils of war." Every such farce ended with a statement condemning the enemy's own "piracy."

Thursday, 22 January

Mr. al-Hourani, in his capacity as central Minister of Justice, issued today Decision No. 1, providing for the formation of seven joint committees, for the purpose of unifying legislation between the two regions.

I had thought about this matter myself since my own time as Minister of Justice, and had discussed it with Mr. Mohamed Fahmy El-Sayed, director of President Abdel Nasser's own legal office, and, at the same time, his brother-in-law.

Mr. El-Sayed is a man of flexible mind, quick in choosing his legal terms, and quick to respond to whoever he is speaking with, if he believes that person to have greater knowledge and a firmer grip on his own argument.

The issuance of this decision was a sound step, in the right direction toward proper unification.

No one should be unaware that many of our modern laws, in both Egypt and Syria, are drawn from a shared source, French legislation for the most part, such as the civil code, the commercial code, and the code of procedure, and, to a considerable extent, the penal code and the code of criminal procedure.

As for the personal status laws, they form a shared heritage among Muslims wherever they may be found, and codification, that is, the drafting of jurisprudential rulings into law, is simply a matter of choosing the most workable solution from among the recognized schools of thought. It was fortunate that the chairmanship of this committee was entrusted to the brilliant jurist, our own colleague at the Faculty of Law, Sheikh Mustafa al-Zarqa, while the study of the civil code committee was entrusted to Dr. Maamoun al-Kuzbari, likewise a professor of this subject at the Faculty of Law, and one of the "architects" of the Union with Cairo, a union he would later turn against, becoming head of the secession government.

My attention was drawn to the formation of a committee to draft special legislation on personal status for non-Muslims. Dr. Fouad Shabbat (a man of Christian faith), dean of the Faculty of Law in Damascus, was chosen for its membership.

Citizens are equal, like the teeth of a comb.

On this same day, two republican decisions were issued. The first provided for transferring Mr. Rifaat Zureik, governor, to Aleppo from his current post (governor of Hama).

This senior administrator proved his sound management, his sensible conduct, and the smoothness of his tact. Yet, despite my own personal regard for him, I often asked myself, privately, why the governor of Aleppo could not be a native son of that very city, someone who might govern it with a deeper understanding of its own people's needs.

Practical experience gave me my own answer: if one faction of its citizens rallied around him, another faction was bound to turn against him.

We suffered a great deal from this very "discord" over the position of mayor of Aleppo. If Muhammad Tlass, of the National Party, was appointed head of its council, we, the People's Party group, would work to have him removed and be rid of him. And if we came to power and appointed one of "our own people" instead (Muhammad Wais), the "Nationalists" would tear into him with sharp tongues, and complaints against him would follow one after another, until a decision was finally issued removing him too.

For this reason, the government preferred always to entrust the governor himself with running the mayoralty, "in an acting capacity," pending the appointment of a proper mayor. The French proverb says: "nothing lasts like the temporary." And the rule, as I observed, was that the governor was always someone other than a native of Aleppo.

This was a painful state of affairs, one that lasted many long years, and did great harm to the city's own progress, given how little time a governor could devote to municipal affairs, and how often he postponed any decision on a vital matter that might cause him a "headache."

For good reason, Duqla al-Manbiji said, in his famous ode:

Aleppo is a treasury of intelligence,

and a homeland of chastity and modesty.

Her rising star brings fortune to the stranger,

while to her own people, she brings only toil and hardship.

On this same day, Mr. Youssef Mazahim, governor of Deir ez-Zor, became Secretary-General of the Ministry of Interior. He was one of my former students at the Faculty of Law, and one of the well-known unionist nationalists. In this post, he took the place of Mr. Ihsan al-Qawas, who had been dismissed from his post without any real fault of conduct or character ever being held against him.

Some time later, Mr. Mazahim was taken on as Minister of Religious Endowments in the new cabinet, a newly created ministry that, in my own view, "has no proper place in the grammar of things," except that its creation may have been a kind of gesture of "parity" with the Southern Region. After the law dissolving family religious endowments was issued under Husni al-Za'im in 1949, the scope of endowment affairs narrowed considerably, since it became limited to "charitable endowments" alone, managed and overseen by the "Directorate General of Endowments," which had its own directorates in the provinces.

Even so, foul odors continued to drift from certain administrators of family endowments, and some directors of charitable endowments were not spared sharp tongues either.

Monday the 26th

The story of government officials' cars is a complicated one, and every government or ministry has sought to root out the abuse of their use, since they are, after all, assigned for the benefit of the senior office a given official holds, so that he may be at his post from the very start of the official working day. But this purpose came to be distorted, and these cars came to be used for "personal" errands instead.

In our own time, "circulars" were issued by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, forbidding the use of cars for anything but state business, though these largely remained mere ink on paper.

Even so, this "misuse" remained relatively limited, since the number of government cars was, in fact, genuinely small. In the Ministry of Justice, for instance, the minister had a single personal car, whose fuel he paid for himself, with the state paying him a fixed sum toward it, any excess coming out of his own pocket. He was entitled to take his family in it, and the driver remained at its service in the evening whenever the minister was invited to an official function or a night session of the Council of Ministers. Otherwise, the driver would go home to his own family once the official working day was over.

I myself owned a small car, which I drove myself outside official working hours, and I made a habit of using it whenever ministerial councils were held at night, sending the driver and the policeman home to their own families. During the month of Ramadan, ministerial councils would sometimes stretch until dawn, so I would take three or four ministers who had already sent their own drivers home, drop them at their houses, and return to my own home in time for the pre-dawn meal, so that we might begin our fast.

Even so, other ministers preferred to keep their official cars, along with their driver and policeman, at their own disposal, to take them home, even when their homes were not very far from the meeting place. This was, of course, their legitimate right, though not one I found myself comfortable indulging in.

The ministry had a second car, assigned "for inspection duties." It was customary for it to carry the Secretary-General, who might bring along some of the directors on his rounds. As for the rest of the officials, even senior ones, they made their own way on foot, or took one of the public buses, after the electric "tramway" had been discontinued in Damascus and Aleppo.

The President of the Republic himself had nothing but a car well worn by long years of use.

President Shukri al-Quwatli rode in his own private car throughout his presidency, after having a special green license plate, reserved for the office of the presidency, affixed to it.

It once happened that we received King Hussein of Jordan on a visit to Damascus, and he rode alongside the President on their way to the Presidential Palace in al-Muhajireen, when the car came to a stop in the al-Afif quarter and refused to move, owing to some mechanical failure. This was a problem that came at the worst possible moment, causing the President great embarrassment, since the King was an enthusiast of fine automobiles, racing cars especially.

Following this incident, the government decided to set aside, in the budget, the price of a car for the presidency.

Even in the days of the Union, some ministers, such as Mr. Fakhir al-Kayali, Minister of the Treasury at its outset and later Minister of State, would bring their own private cars to the ministry, for lack of any official car assigned to them.

Once I became Minister of the Treasury, I managed to persuade the man holding the reins of decision to purchase eight new Oldsmobile cars, assigned to the ministers, though this did not sit well with the press, which considered it "wasteful" of state funds.

After the Union's fall, the number of government cars grew even further, until their finest models were being used to carry children to school, then stationed outside to bring them home again.

I once witnessed a scene that affected me deeply. On a snowy winter's day, I stood watching the pupils come out of a secondary school located in front of my house in Damascus. The cold was bitter, and the snow was falling heavily. The fine cars had grown so numerous there was scarcely room to park them all. I saw the "sons of the privileged," those who had once raised the banners of progress against the tyranny of capitalists, slipping into the warmth of cars the nation had paid for, along with their fuel and their drivers' salaries, cars that sped them off like arrows. And I saw the hatred and resentment in the eyes of the poor children, dressed in clothes too thin to shield them from the bitter cold, dragging themselves toward their own distant homes, the cold cutting straight through their tender bodies.

I said to myself: how far today has drifted from yesterday.

To prevent the misuse of state funds in buying cars for fortunate officials, President Abdel Nasser issued Decision No. 160, dated 26 January 1959, in a single article, providing that official cars would be assigned only to ministers and deputy ministers exclusively, though he allowed each ministry a certain number of cars "according to the needs of the work, not assigned to any particular official," their number for each ministry to be set by the Central Economic Committee, made up of a number of ministers.

Wednesday, 28 January

We were summoned to a special session held at the palace, chaired by Boghdadi, devoted to financing matters. I had to attend, since I was the one who would be doing the "financing."

Our friend Dr. Ezzat al-Tarabulsi, governor of the Central Bank, attended the session, along with his senior aides, foremost among them our other friend Dr. Awad Barakat. The two of them had been fellow students at the University of Paris, and were both renowned for their integrity and scholarly competence.

Ezzat spoke, explaining the dangers of currency controls, which lent support to what I myself had argued twenty days before.

The discussion then turned to the question of unifying the two central banks, Egyptian and Syrian (the Egyptians insisted on the word "bank," while we insisted on the word "masraf," being the Arabic term). Ezzat rejected the idea for the time being, saying it would cause confusion in the financial markets.

We also reviewed the question of unifying the two currencies, Syrian and Egyptian, which the Central Bank people would not accept.

They may well have been right, for the time being, but what real meaning could there be in a unified state having two separate central banks, and two separate currencies, each with its own system and method of operation?

It was reasonable enough to leave the situation as it stood for the time being, but the groundwork for a merger had to be laid for the not-too-distant future, on the basis of a thorough study.

This is exactly what I said, openly.

Boghdadi said that unifying the two banks was an absolute necessity, and as soon as possible, though unifying the two currencies could wait a while longer.

We never learned the true position of the Minister of Economy, Khalil Kallas, since he took no clear stance himself, despite being the minister with actual jurisdiction over the matter among us, and one of the leading figures of the (former) Baath Party.

On another front, the signs pointed to the growing rift between our Republic and Iraq finally coming out into the open. Al-Ahram newspaper published a frank article, sharply critical of the Iraqi regime, the first time it had done so this openly.

For the first time as well, Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Communist Party, criticized, at a conference held by his own party, "the voices raised against communism in the Arab countries." It was clear he meant President Gamal, who had recently attacked communism and the communists.

It is well known that the communists stood, and still stand, against the Union, favoring a federal union in its place.

Boghdadi once remarked that they had agreed to the Union in Cairo out of fear that the communists might otherwise seize power in Syria.

Al-Ahram's response to Khrushchev was a mild one, the response of someone seeking to avoid confrontation.

Saturday, 7 February

He was a senior official, tall in stature, his hair and temples streaked with gray, elegantly dressed, holding a high position in one of the specialized government banks. He was the son of a well-known national fighter, who had borne arms against the colonizers from Libya to Palestine to Syria and Jordan.

He received no pension whatsoever from the state, and died in his own modest home, in a condition no one would envy him for. Yet he left behind a fragrant reputation that no amount of money could ever buy.

I walked behind his coffin to his final resting place, and delivered his eulogy, doing justice to him and to his long struggle.

It is regrettable that those who accompanied his funeral procession numbered no more than twenty people, his own children and a small handful of his closest friends.

This was because he had never held a position of power, and "old-fashioned" struggle does not "serve" people well in the corridors of the state.

I was surprised one day when the minister overseeing this bank asked the Council of Ministers to approve the dismissal of this fighter's own son, "for being corrupt and an embezzler."

Memories of this great man stirred within me, and I felt a sorrow beyond measure, that this undutiful son had brought such disgrace upon his own father's memory.

I tried to salvage some small measure of the family's own dignity, and proposed to the Council of Ministers that the decision on his dismissal be postponed, and that I would personally see to it that he resigned instead. And so it was done.

A mere formality, to save a little face.

Saturday, 14 February

I made a tour of the provinces, to discuss with the finance directors the affairs of their own directorates.

These personal contacts have real value, in easing people's access to their own rights, and speeding up the completion of their business.

The tour lasted several days, beginning in Homs and Hama and Aleppo, and ending in Latakia.

I found some relief from the exhaustion caused by the work of the ministry and its attached departments, such as customs, the Grain Office, the Directorate of Tobacco Monopoly, and the Central Bank (which had been under Finance, before being transferred to Economy), along with the Directorate of Insurance and Pensions and the Public Debt Fund, and I do not know what else besides, in addition to the exhausting series of meetings that sometimes ran until dawn.

What drew my attention on this tour was the sheer number of requests for employment, for any post whatsoever.

It was certain that the drive to seek out government employment was rooted in the poor state of the economy, brought on by poor harvests and the stagnation of the cotton market, which found no buyers abroad. On the one hand, the communist countries had no hard currency with which to buy it, and we, besides, owed them for the cost of weapons and certain industrial imports. As for the Western countries, which did hold such currency, they were reluctant to deal with us at all, out of spite toward the Union and the country's stance of positive neutrality, and, more likely still, the country's own perceived leaning toward the other bloc.

On my return, I found on my desk Decision-Law No. 46 of the President of the Republic, dated 14 February of that same month, adding a paragraph to Article 244 of the Customs Law, reading as follows:

"Customs duties shall be exempted on ammunition, weapons, equipment, transport tools, and clothing (foodstuffs excepted) imported for the army and the police force in the Syrian region.

"Likewise exempted from duties shall be whatever is imported for the Military Social Institution, of a kind and quantity to be determined by the Minister of War."

This law has a story behind it.

When the French occupied Syria, they exempted, by a law issued by the High Commissioner, military imports for the army, along with anything else imported for its benefit.

After the French departed in 1946, this provision remained in force, like other legislation from the mandate era.

Among the things imported without any duties at all were alcoholic beverages.

I raised the matter of these exemptions, which had been abused, including the continued importation of alcohol for officers under the name of the "Military Social Institution," with President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and proposed abolishing these exemptions altogether, to sever, once and for all, the lingering tail of foreign privilege.

The President agreed, and a decision was issued abolishing the old provision.

But General Jamal al-Faisal, commander of the First Army, objected once the new provision was applied. He must certainly have convinced the President that his own "Social Institution" imported nothing but what served the widows and orphans of the fallen, such as sewing machines, so that they might earn a living from them.

The President went back on his earlier decision, and issued a compromise decision, as a settlement between the Ministry of Finance and the army command.

We made clear to this command that it had to prepare detailed lists of what the Social Institution actually needed "for widows and orphans," meaning the wives and children of the fallen, and submit them to the Minister of War, for him to study and decide what deserved exemption, approving it, and what did not, refusing it. It was hoped that this would be a solution merciful both in appearance and in substance.

Saturday, 21 February

President Abdel Nasser delivered a speech today in Republic Square in Cairo.

He set out once again, before the public, his own philosophy of Arab nationalism freed from foreign influence, and of building a "cooperative, democratic, socialist society."

Standing beside him was Marshal Tito, leader of communist Yugoslavia, who had rebelled against the Soviet bloc and forged his own distinct economic philosophy. He was a personal friend of the President, and the two of them had agreed with Nehru, the Indian leader, to establish a "non-aligned" front between the Western and Eastern blocs.

In this speech, the President disclosed a letter he had sent to Khrushchev, asking him about the Soviet Union's own position toward the United Arab Republic, in the wake of Abdel Nasser's attack on the Syrian Communist Party, whom he accused of working underground to bring down the Union, joining hands in this with the agents of colonialism. He assured him, in this letter, that his own country's friendship with the Arab Republic was firm and unshakeable, and that the disagreement between Arab government and the local communists was an internal matter, one the Soviet Union had no wish to interfere in.

The truth of the matter is that al-Sarraj had arrested a large number of Syrian communists, which naturally delighted the West, and my own belief is that Khrushchev was not being entirely honest in claiming he did not support the Syrian Communist Party and left it to its own fate, since he had declared, just the month before, that he refused "to see Arab communists branded as agents of colonialism."

Out of the conflict between Abdel Nasser and Khrushchev, the Syrian Communist Party split against itself, one faction siding with the Union and attacking the communists (Qadri Qal'aji), while the other faction remained faithful to its own communist course and convictions.

The first faction came to be regarded as sincerely "nationalist," devoted to God and country, its members drawing close to the centers of power, while the second faction was regarded as a renegade, faithless group, unfit to be trusted, whether in popular institutions or in the departments of the state.

On this same day, several fundamental republican decisions were issued, on the proposal of the Minister of Justice, Mr. Nihad al-Qasim, along with an important decision from the Council of Ministers. Here is a summary of them:

The first decision concerned the organization of the notary offices.

This was Decision-Law No. 54, dated 21 February 1959.

The notary public had a special standing, one the Ottoman lawgiver had taken from French legislation, which calls them les notaires, French legislation on this point going back to the eleventh year of the French Revolution, though amended many times since.

Their title among us was taken from the words of God, exalted is He:

"O you who have believed, when you contract a debt for a specified term, write it down. And let a scribe write it between you in justice" (Surah al-Baqarah, verse 282).

The Law on the Judicial Authority calls them "katib al-adl," without the definite article prefix some use.

In their modern-day work, they carry out a number of important functions, chief among them notarizing contracts between contracting parties, giving them a high evidentiary force, such that their validity cannot be challenged except on grounds of forgery. Having once been independent of the state, earning their fees from those they served, the new law made them a government institution, paid a state salary and treated in the manner of officials.

Since they had been the ones renting their own premises, furnishing them at their own expense, and paying their own staff's salaries, the new law preserved their rights, and established a special committee to compensate them.

Second: The Law on the Council of State

This was organized by Republican Decision No. 55, dated 21 February 1959. We had previously had a system of administrative justice known as the Council of Consultation (Majlis al-Shura).

I had worked to abolish it in the 1950 constitution, when I served as its rapporteur, sensing how little use it truly served, especially since, in those days, it had become something of "a refuge for the aged and infirm among judges," and little more than an imitation of the French Council of State. A special chamber had been created within the Court of Cassation (now the Court of Cassation under its current name) to rule on administrative disputes, and both we and the people found relief from the Council of Consultation, with matters running as smoothly as could be wished.

But Mr. Nihad held a different view, especially since the Southern Region already had its own Council of State, firmly established there, so that one of two solutions was necessary: either abolish it in Egypt, which was practically impossible, or establish a Council of State in Syria, which is exactly what happened.

After the Union's demise, the 1950 constitution was restored, and the Council of State was added to Article 108, thereby securing it a constitutional standing of its own.

Third: The Law on the Judicial Authority

Issued by Republican Decision No. 56, dated 21 February 1959, on the organization of the judicial authority, covering inspection, the courts of every kind and level, the Public Prosecution, the investigating judiciary, the notary offices (now a government institution), the Judicial Council, the method of appointing judges, their immunity, the rules of their promotion, and the penalties that may be imposed on them.

It is worth noting that Article 81 of the Law on the Judicial Authority, amended in 1961 (dated 15 November), provides as follows:

"Judges are forbidden from expressing political opinions or leanings.

"They are likewise forbidden from engaging in political activity."

This provision still stands to this day, but, as the saying goes, to whom are you reciting your psalms, David? For judges have since immersed themselves thoroughly in general politics, marching in party processions and applauding just as everyone else does.

Fourth: The Law on Cases and Procedures for Appeal Before the Court of Cassation

Issued by Republican Decision No. 58, dated 21 February 1959, by which the state acquired its own dedicated department, staffed by legal officials, tasked with defending its interests and rights, and representing it before the courts.

Ministries had previously appointed their own lawyers, chosen from among the practicing lawyers of each province, to defend their rights whenever cases were brought against them, or by them, before the courts.

The Ministry of Finance had a number of such lawyers in various provinces, appointed by a decision of the minister, under an agreement on their monthly fees.

Among those I appointed before the Union were Mr. Ali Bouzo and Mr. Rashad Barmada, who became the first head of the Government Litigation Department under the Union.