The Second Year of the Union - Part 8: The National Union Elections and the Lawrence al-Shaalan Smuggling Case

Sunday, 5 July

The Economic Committee met, under Field Marshal Amer's chairmanship, to settle the budget question, and the discussion proceeded in a comfortable atmosphere.

But we were taken by surprise when Mr. Fakhir al-Kayali, who had held the post of Minister of the Treasury before me, removed from it when the current cabinet was formed and the reins of this ministry entrusted to me on 7 October 1958, "revealed" in the session the existence of a sum of fifty million lira, as though I had deliberately concealed it in order to seek financial support from the Southern Region.

I had no knowledge whatsoever of any such sum, one my own aides and directors had never once mentioned to me. I asked leave to step out of the session, to question the Treasury officials accompanying me, the Secretary-General, the director of the finance department, and some senior officials, who confirmed, categorically, that Minister al-Kayali was "imagining things, lost in daydreams." They signed a written statement denying his "certain information," in its entirety.

We interpreted his strange stance as an attempt to position himself as the late Hassan Jabara's own successor, eager to display the breadth of his own financial knowledge, knowledge that rested on no accurate information whatsoever.

His insistence on the existence of this enormous "hidden" sum drew great astonishment from those present, who laughed at this "spat" between two Northern ministers, one resting on no foundation or justification at all.

185 million lira was set aside for the development budget, 36.5 million of it from American aid, which the Republic accepted in the form of a long-term loan.

For the record, and for comparison with today's budgets, I note the following:

The unified budget figures for the two regions came to 195,093,000 pounds,

Of which 95,062,100 pounds went to the armed forces,

478,000 to the National Assembly,

And a mere 25,000 to the central Ministry of the Treasury alone.

The Northern Region's own budget figures came to 493,959,000 lira, of which 239,000,000 lira represented the Northern Region's own contribution to the unified budget of the Ministry of War, which had become a unified central ministry.

Wednesday, 8 July: The National Union Elections

I deliberately delayed my return to Damascus until the National Union elections were over. I had nominated myself for Aleppo by telegram while still in Cairo, in keeping with the President's own wish, but I appointed no agents to watch the polling boxes on my behalf, nor did I even go down to Aleppo, nor did I issue any pamphlet or announce any platform.

My brothers and cousins told me that the "People's Party men," the communists, and the Muslim Brotherhood group had "worked against me." I do not know the reason for this. The governor himself confirmed these facts to me.

I won the election with a good number of votes.

Contradictory things were said about these elections.

Mr. Riyad al-Maliki, who had been Minister of Culture, put himself forward for Damascus, and won the election.

When he wrote his "Memories on the Path of Struggle and Defeat" in 1972, having by then been removed from the cabinet, he said of these elections:

"All the Syrian executive ministers were forced to nominate themselves."[1] My own answer to this is that we were ministers in the government, and it was only natural for us to run in elections that would form the very new order of which we ourselves were pillars. The President had expressed an urgent wish that ministers set an example in exercising this political right belonging to all citizens, and it would hardly make sense for someone to serve as a government minister while refusing to stand in elections whose winners would become the tongue, the eye, and the sword of the people.

None of this casts any doubt on whether a given minister was content with the single-party system or not.

I recall once telling President Abdel Nasser, when he asked my opinion of this National Union:

"I wish there could be more than one party in the country, three parties, say." His answer was: "America will fund the party of the right, the Soviet Union will fund the party of the left, and Saudi Arabia will take charge of the third. The government will be left without any popular backing to rest its own weak rule upon."

This was the man's own conviction, held from the moment he accepted the Union, and set before those he negotiated with, and he never once wavered from it. We all knew of this condition from the start, and it was the Baathists who stood at the very forefront of the dialogue with him on it. They were, for this reason, the people most familiar with the National Union of anyone.

On this very basis, the President refused the Baath's request to strike the "reactionaries" from the rolls, and the Baathists split among themselves into two camps:

One camp decided to boycott the elections altogether, so long as the President refused to strike the "reactionaries," while the other decided to take part, nominating themselves, though some of this second group later withdrew after nominating themselves, on the grounds that al-Sarraj had interfered in the elections.

Al-Maliki writes:

"The investigative and intelligence agencies were remarkably active during these elections, stirring up rumors and gossip against certain ministers."

Of these same elections, Mr. George Sadiqni wrote:[2]

"When the National Union elections were announced for the summer of 1959, all three leaders (Akram al-Hourani, Michel Aflaq, and Salah al-Din al-Bitar), consistent with this same logic, rushed to direct the largest possible number of their own loyal followers to nominate themselves in these elections. When it was later announced that the vetting committees had been abolished, and that the doors of the Socialist Union were open to everyone, Akram al-Hourani moved quickly to direct his own followers to withdraw their nominations. Michel Aflaq, imagining the field had thereby been cleared for him, and that his own moment had come, sent out, at first, instructions to continue with their nominations, even though he was the very one who had said, in the speech dissolving the party: 'The National Union will bring together many elements, but treacherous and corrupt elements must not be allowed to enter it,' meaning he ought not to have accepted the abolition of the committees meant to strike out these treacherous and corrupt elements."

The elections were held across the country, as some insist, much like any other election, once the President had done away with the vetting committees the Baathists had insisted on establishing, to strike "reactionaries and traitors" from the candidate lists, since the President dreamed of a national reconciliation within the crucible of the National Union. The result was that Baath candidates suffered a heavy defeat, with only 250 of them winning, out of 9,445.

Abdel Nasser's own view was that they had tried this vetting process in Egypt, in the 1957 National Assembly elections, and had not been comfortable with it. He commented on this unusual measure by saying:

"I felt, at the time, a general sense that vetting undermined people's own perception of the elections' integrity, in addition to the fact that applying it would prove an extremely difficult undertaking, given the sheer number of candidates, which now stands, in Egypt, at a hundred and twenty thousand, and in Syria at ten thousand candidates."

If the Baathists suffered a defeat in these elections, this was hardly a surprising turn of events, since they had not, generally speaking, been close to the hearts of ordinary citizens in those days. Even so, questions began spreading among educated circles about what tomorrow might reveal, questions tinged with satisfaction and delight in more conservative circles, and with a certain anxiety in circles working to keep the ranks of the people united and unbroken.

The Baathists lost some of the esteem they had enjoyed, once persistent rumors spread that they had been taking money from Abdel Nasser, rumors that may well have been leaked by Egyptian intelligence, or by Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj himself.

During the tripartite union talks of 1963, Abdel Nasser reminded Michel Aflaq of the seventy thousand pounds he had handed him before the Union, so that the party could close its own ranks, using this enormous sum to help support the "militants" among its members,[3] "and yet no one ever called them agents for this."

Out of a wish to preserve the National Union's own independence, the President issued two decisions:

The first, dated 14 November 1959, No. 19, concerning "the structures of the National Union in the Syrian region," whose eighth article forbade "ministers from nominating themselves for the executive committee offices provided for in this decision."[4]

The second, dated 19 November 1959, No. 31, concerning "the formation of bodies to rule on the validity of the National Union elections in the Syrian region."

Two judicial committees were established for this purpose:

The first, based in Damascus, with jurisdiction over the provinces of Damascus, Homs, Daraa, and al-Suwayda, made up of two councillors from the Council of State and the public prosecutor of Damascus.

The second, based in Aleppo, with jurisdiction to hear appeals from the elections in the provinces of Aleppo and the other provinces not assigned to the Damascus committee.

This committee was likewise made up of three senior judges.

The aforementioned republican decision named the six judges, all of them known for their legal competence and their good reputation.

As an aside, I note that the question of ruling on challenges to the validity of elections has occupied scholars of constitutional law, and continues to do so, ever since electoral systems were established, as a means of learning citizens' own views on their representatives in elected popular bodies.

Syria has known several such systems:

The system of the 1930 constitution, which adopted a purely political approach.

Its Article 47 granted the Chamber of Deputies itself the right to rule on the validity of elections, by a majority of its own members.

I lived through this experience myself, when elected a deputy in 1947, and I cannot honestly say that this approach was free of partisan and personal considerations, or free of every kind of bias, and for this reason we abandoned it.

The system of the 1950 constitution adopted a mixed approach, creating a new method for ruling on challenges, combining the political and the legal, by entrusting this task to the Supreme Court, made up of seven members elected by the Chamber of Deputies by majority vote, from a list of fourteen names drawn up by the President of the Republic. This court included both judges and deputies.

The system of the 1973 constitution chose a different approach still, entrusting the Supreme Constitutional Court with the task of investigating challenges, and, once it had finished, referring the files, along with its reports, to the People's Assembly. Although this constitution remained silent on what this Assembly was actually meant to do, Article 144 simply stating that "a report on the results of its investigation shall be referred to it," the clear intent was that the People's Assembly itself would rule on the validity or invalidity of the challenges.

Tuesday, 21 July

Imam Ghalib bin Ali arrived in Damascus, with a long and extensive retinue. He was from Oman, and had risen up against Sultan Said, whom he regarded as a usurper, unfit to serve as Imam of the Ibadis, the inhabitants of that Sultanate.

Ibadism is a distinct school among the Kharijite sects, named after its founder, Abdallah ibn Ibad, a contemporary of Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan, who died in the latter years of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan's caliphate. This school is the closest of the Kharijite sects to Sunni Islam, holding that the finest examples to follow after the Prophet are Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab, and that the caliphate may belong to any Muslim, not to the Quraysh alone, so long as the candidate is pious and rules according to the judgments of the Quran, and that he must be deposed should he stray from them. The Ibadis regard those who disagree with them as ungrateful for God's blessings, rather than as unbelievers in the true sense. In their view, the Quran is never abrogated by the Sunna, and its own wording is decisive, which is why they do not accept stoning a married adulterer to death, but instead flog him a hundred lashes only, since this is what the Quranic text itself prescribes.

This school spread across West Africa, especially among the Berbers and in the Tunisian desert, and remains the official school of the Sultanate of Oman, from where it later spread to the island of Zanzibar.[5]

Over dinner with the Omani sheikhs, Imam Ghalib explained to us the reasons for his own revolt against the current Imam, an ally of Britain, saying that his own uprising was directed at the British colonial state, with whom he had been at war for many long years. This was the purpose of his current tour, to secure material support to bring down the corrupt regime ruling his own country.

I looked at the "princes" among the members of his retinue, and found them backward "chieftains," from head to toe, backward Bedouins, marching in the train of a deposed "Imam" whose sole concern was to reclaim his own imamate.

Poor Arab nation, and poor Islam, if these are the imams meant to lead you.

Thursday, 23 July

Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj, Minister of Interior, drew me aside in the spacious hall of the Council of Ministers, and said to me in a whisper: "There are specters of conspiracies being woven against the Union on the horizon, from both outside and inside the country. We must therefore work to strengthen our own internal ranks and reinforce our front, so that it becomes strong and impervious to the buying of loyalties. You have, in the Customs Administration, a file concerning 'Lawrence al-Shaalan,' and it matters a great deal to us that his own tribe stand with the Union. I ask you to shelve it, so that its owner may rest easy, and we can be assured of him."

I asked him: "On what legal basis am I to shelve it, when a judicial court has already issued a ruling in the matter?" He said: "Security considerations." I asked his leave to study the case first.

I had thought the name "Lawrence" was simply a joke, having never heard of a Syrian bearing this English "orientalist's" own name before. It is well known that Lawrence lived alongside Prince Faisal bin al-Hussein, worked with him, helped establish a throne for him, and wrote his own famous book, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom."

I requested the file in question, and found that this "Lawrence" belonged to the Shaalan tribe, settled in Adra, on the outskirts of the Damascus plain, to its east, and that a ruling had been issued against him by the Damascus Customs Court for smuggling prohibited goods, imposing a fine exceeding one and a half million Syrian lira, for a series of "hideous" smuggling offenses. The file also indicated the killing of one customs guard and the wounding of another, during a pursuit of smugglers in the Syrian steppe, two crimes falling under the jurisdiction of a judiciary independent of the government.

I told the Minister of Interior that this was a serious matter, since the killing case was, in any event, outside my own authority, being already in the judiciary's hands. As for the fine, it was so enormous that if I exercised my own right to have it dropped, whoever came after me would face the worst possible questions over it. I asked him whether he would agree to send me an official letter requesting that it be shelved. He agreed, and I told him: "I'll request the file officially, and think the matter over."

I informed the Vice President of the Republic of the matter, and he raised no objection.

By a strange coincidence, the customs police in the Aleppo region arrested a "dangerous" smuggler who had committed "the crime of stealing a sack of salt from the Jabbul salt marsh," which he had been carrying on his donkey, for his own food. He came to me complaining of the injustice done to him, and I said to myself: glory to God, drug smugglers find someone to intercede for them, while this poor wretch, seeking release from a "trivial charge," finds no one to hear his complaint. When I looked into his case, it turned out a settlement was possible for five lira, with his donkey returned to him. But the man did not even have this sum, nor the fare to return to his own town.

I saw to the matter myself, and the state's treasury grew richer by this little "spoil." As for the great offense, it remained on the "enforcement" docket, since it would hardly do for the state's own accounts to rest on the daggers of smugglers.

Tuesday, 4 August

The Council of Ministers decided to appoint Mr. Rateb al-Hasami Director General of the Grain Office, on the nomination of the Minister of Economy, at the first rank, third grade, with a fixed monthly salary of 850 Syrian lira.

The Grain Office had been attached to the Ministry of Finance, then transferred to the Ministry of Economy. I was delighted at this appointment, knowing well how badly this office, handling fifty million Syrian lira, needed a competent and trustworthy official.

Al-Hasami had been a prominent member of the People's Party, though he had resigned from it for local electoral reasons. My own bond with him nonetheless remained a close one, and the years ahead would only strengthen it further.

Monday, 24 August

It had long been Egypt's custom to celebrate the "Feast of the Nile Flood" every year, an official holiday on which government departments closed.

The President may well have realized that Syrians would accept only holidays celebrated on the basis of Arab nationalism, and had no love even for the mere mention of Pharaonic Egypt, or anything that recalled it to mind. His own Arab nationalist sentiments may well have leaned in this same direction.

For this reason, he issued Decision No. 1451, dated this same day, abolishing the closure of government departments for this occasion, thereby stripping it of its status as an "official holiday."

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Endnotes:

[1] P. 294.

[2] A member of the National Command of the Arab Socialist Baath Party (as of 1995), in his book "Sessions of the Party Council 1947-1957," p. 249. Colonel Muhammad Umran likewise wrote, in his book "My Experience in the Revolution," p. 17: "It must be noted that the party's decisions did not emerge from organized meetings of its own institutions, but that each individual leader often resorted, on his own, to issuing orders and decisions binding on the entire party."

[3] See Dr. Adel Zaabub, p. 63.

[4] Published in the Official Gazette of the United Arab Republic, dated 24 November 1959.

[5] See Dr. Abdul Salam al-Tarmanini, Events of Islamic History, year 86 AH; the Encyclopedia of Islam; Muhammad Abu Zahra, Islamic Schools of Thought; and al-Shahrastani, Kitab al-Milal wa al-Nihal, vol. 1, p. 134.