Year 1961 - Part 11: The New Central Government and Homad's Appointment as Minister of Planning

Wednesday the 16th: A New Government

Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer summoned me to meet him at his own residence on Abu Rummaneh Street. He asked me about the general situation, and I explained the state of fear people were living in over an unknown future. The talk of the day concerned "the nationalization of real estate," so much so that tenants had stopped paying rent to property owners, hoping the state would take ownership of these residential buildings instead.

I reminded him of the wretched agricultural situation, owing to the drought, and told him: my friends in Aleppo tell me the city has become a ghost town, given the weak harvests and the slump in cotton, for lack of money in people's own hands.

It is regrettable that the "Supply Council" decided to ban the transport of grain from one province to another, despite my own written objection, and monopolized the grain trade, so that grain merchants, who have practiced this trade generation after generation, found themselves without work as well, even as they were still required to pay their own shop taxes to the state treasury on time.

I asked him, should there be any new laws coming, to kindly announce them, so that everyone would know where they stood.

He assured me, firmly, that the socialist measures had come to an end, and that no further measures of this kind would be issued.

In truth, the only thing left was "the nationalization of real estate."

The Field Marshal was categorical that this measure was not under discussion at all.

After this, the Field Marshal turned to speak of the new government.

He said that cooperation between the central ministers and the executive ministers was lacking.

Indeed, it was nearly lacking between the two regions themselves.

He gave an example: the Minister of Supply (the former officer Jamal al-Sufi, counted among the Baathists) preferred to sell grain to any foreign country at all, rather than to the Southern Region, if he calculated it would earn him even a single extra mil in profit.

Likewise, the military ministers were divided among themselves.

To eliminate every contradiction, and concentrate authority and decision-making in the hands of a single minister for both regions, President Abdel Nasser decided to restructure the entire government apparatus, abolishing the two regional ministries and replacing them with a single central ministry, each of its own departments headed by a single central minister, based in Cairo. He surprised me by saying the President had chosen me as Minister of Planning.

At this ministry, I would work alongside Vice President Abdel Latif Boghdadi.

He asked my own opinion of this reorganization.

I told him: since the President has already reached this decision, all I can do is pray that God grant him success in his own heavy task.

I said: God knows I have served this state with complete sincerity and honesty, for I am content with its own establishment and its own domestic, foreign, and social direction.

If I have had reservations about certain pieces of legislation, I voiced them at the time, but once a course has been decided, I remain bound by it, and work to carry it out faithfully.

But my own health no longer allows me to carry out ministerial work.

Nor do I wish to live far from Damascus, for I would rather devote myself to my university work, and to raising my own two children.

Ministerial work, and the sheer number of meetings, day and night, have already kept me from my own fatherly duties.

I asked him to work toward accepting my own resignation, and choosing another minister in my place, someone more energetic and in the flush of youth.

The Field Marshal rejected my own arguments, and began heaping "praise" on me instead.

The President, he said, had known me since before the Union, aware of my own national leanings and my socialist convictions.

And should I leave the ministry now, after the Baathists and some independents had already resigned from it, ill-wishers would spread rumors that I had shown solidarity with the Union's own enemies.

This would, without doubt, weaken the political leadership's own cohesion.

He closed by insisting I carry out this "national duty."

If I still longed for the university, the matter could always be reconsidered later, and I could satisfy my own scholarly appetite by teaching at Cairo University in the meantime.

I said: on this basis, then, I will stay. My regards to the President.

Thursday, 17 August

Decisions appointing the central government were issued today.

Among them, seven vice presidents of the Republic, two Syrian, Mr. Nour al-Din Kahhaleh and Mr. Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj, and five Egyptian, Abdel Latif Boghdadi (Vice President for Planning Affairs, with whom I would work), Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, Zakaria Mohieddine (for public institutions), Hussein el-Shafei (also for public institutions), and Kamal El-Din Hussein (for local administration).

Vice President Kahhaleh was given responsibility for production.

Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj for internal affairs.

What stands out most in this new formation is al-Sarraj's own move to Cairo.

And, further, the assignment of the Ministry of Local Administration to Mr. Jaddou Ezzedine, whose own base would remain in Damascus.

This meant removing al-Sarraj from the administration of the Northern Region, which he had run, under one name or another, since the days of Adib al-Shishakli, placing the reins of Syria's own internal security in Jaddou's hands instead, one of al-Sarraj's own rivals.

The government, under the President's own chairmanship, numbered thirty-seven ministers, thirteen of them Syrian.

My own "rank" in the protocol order was third, after Dr. Nour al-Din Tarraf (who had been chairman of the Egyptian Executive Council's own executive committee) and Mr. Ahmad Husni, who had served as Minister of Justice in the Southern Region back when I held this same ministry, at the start of the Union.

Dr. Mahmoud Fawzi, the eternal Foreign Minister, came fourth.

Two of our own brothers left the ministry:

Muhammad al-Alem, former Minister of Communications, who suffered from severe back pain, and used to lie stretched out on a couch in his office while reviewing the ministry's own affairs.

This state of affairs had lasted since he entered the executive ministry on 7 October 1958, and it had been difficult, both for him and for the petitioners who came to see him.

And the engineer Wajih al-Samman, former Minister of Industry.

Confusion and anxiety seized both me and my own family. How would we move the children to new schools? Where would we live in Cairo? And how long would our own stay "abroad" last?

These are questions only God Himself could answer.

Saturday the 19th

I went today to bid farewell to the ministry's own senior officials.

I was truly overcome with emotion.

I could scarcely control my own nerves, and they could see it plainly.

I had friends among them I had known since my very first term at the Ministry of Finance, in 1955, and our relationship had been renewed at the Union ministry, continuing with them at the Ministry of the Treasury from 7 October 1958 until the new decisions were issued on 16 August 1961.

I never once wronged a single one of them.

I received them more as friends than as officials working under my own leadership.

I would rise to greet them, and share coffee with them.

I discussed the ministry's affairs and the citizens' own concerns with them, with complete candor and honesty.

They knew I stood by them in hard times.

And worked to secure their own legitimate rights, in good times.

If my own feelings are any true guide, they must have felt as though they had lost a friend they could rely on, now facing a future with a new minister they would have to adjust to.

Monday the 21st

Mr. Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj held a dinner banquet at the Bloudan Hotel, in honor of a delegation of Egyptian National Assembly members.

He invited the members of the government as well.

I was seated beside him.

I told him of my own conversation with Field Marshal Amer, well aware that a certain lost warmth stands between the two of them.

But he gave me no sense of any real anger at his own transfer to Cairo. He remained, as always, taciturn, listening, with no sign on his own face of either approval or objection.

Saturday, 26 August: The Move to Cairo, and the New Government's First Meeting

Officials at the Republican Palace contacted me repeatedly these past days, to confirm the date of my own arrival in Cairo.

I felt a real lump in my throat, and deliberately kept postponing my own departure.

Not out of any dislike for my own new post, for I had decided to remain a part of the Union's own structure, but out of dread at the atmosphere of exile I had already grown so weary of.

And at taking up work I had no experience in at all, planning.

And working alongside Vice President Abdel Latif Boghdadi, who was no longer Minister of Planning, but had become simply "Vice President of the Republic," whereas, in the previous cabinet, he had been "Vice President of the Republic and Minister of Planning."

And working in an "Egyptian" atmosphere I knew nothing of.

I placed my trust in God, packed my own suitcase, and made my way to the airport.

On the plane were Field Marshal Amer, Kamal El-Din Hussein, Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj, Ahmad al-Hunaidi, Thabet al-Aris, and Akram Deiri.

The jet Comet took off with us, cutting through Israeli airspace, by the Field Marshal's own order, and we reached Cairo airport an hour and five minutes after taking off from Damascus at ten.

Waiting to receive me at the airport, sent by Boghdadi, was Hamed Radwan, who took me at once to a meeting held at the Ministry of Planning's own headquarters, chaired by Boghdadi. There, I met a number of the senior officials I would be working alongside.

I bear witness that they received me with the greatest warmth, surrounding me with real signs of goodwill and a sincere wish to ease my own task, as their minister, one who knew little of their ministry's own affairs, or of the higher institutes attached to it.

I am not unaware of the respect Egyptians show toward their own leaders and ministers. This may well be because Egypt has known the institution of the state for thousands of years.

The Nile Valley is flat, open land, subject to flooding every year, and for this reason the state, since ancient times, found it easy to extend its own authority from the Delta to the upper reaches of the Nile, given how easily its own armed forces could move to put down any rebellious stirring.

And whenever the Nile itself grew restless, sweeping over the fields and homes along its own banks, the Egyptians felt its own threat to their very sustenance, and so cooperated, all of them together, in building dams to halt its own fury and rage, under the government's own supervision.

For this reason, the foundations of mutual cooperation, and obedience to the ruling order, took firm root.

Along with respect for authority, and carrying out its own orders willingly, not grudgingly. These are phenomena simply not found in Syrian reality.

For Syria has, since ancient times, had towering mountains, in which those who broke away from the state would take refuge, launching raids against the forces of the ruling order.

It has always proven difficult for these forces to root out rebels entirely.

And even once they managed to subdue dissidents in the Druze Mountain, other dissidents would be stirring in the Kurdish mountains, or the Alawite mountains, or the mountains of Lebanon or the Hauran.

For this reason, Syrian history is filled with tales of rebellion and defiance against the state.

The Syrians came to have implanted in them a love of high office, and a love of rebellion, revolution, and individualism, and perhaps, along with this, a real difficulty in cooperation and mutual dealing between rulers and the ruled.

Even so, I know the times have changed.

The state has since imposed its own authority and prestige.

And modern communications have made it easy to reach every corner of the country.

Democracy, too, has strengthened the bond between the state and the citizen.

So that the citizen has come to see the state as his own, and has become, in turn, the very citizen the state works to educate, cultivate, and prepare to stand firm against adversity when the hour of crisis comes.

Even so, certain complications may still lie dormant, hidden away like fire smoldering deep within the recesses of our own instincts. We shall see what tomorrow brings, a tomorrow already standing at the very threshold of dawn.

That evening, the new government held its very first meeting, at the Republican Palace, chaired by Gamal Abdel Nasser, his deputies gathered around him, at the head of the long, four-sided rectangular table.

Before every member sat a microphone.

In one corner sat a number of staff, some summarizing what was said in writing, others overseeing the recording equipment.

This was a method we had never grown accustomed to in our own Syrian ministry.

We used to discuss the matters the Council chairman put before us, read out by Hamed al-Ameri, Secretary-General of the Republican Palace, when the session was chaired by the President of the Republic, or by Dr. Anwar Hatem, when it was chaired by the chairman of the Council of Ministers.

After discussion, the matter would be put to a vote.

The session secretary would then record the government's own decision.

But any minister had the right to record his own objection in writing, should he wish.

The decision always rested with the majority. And because no formal record was kept of individual votes, no one ever really knew where the ministers themselves stood.

Some of them would vote in favor of a decision, only to disown it afterward. These are facts I know of myself, though they were, in any case, rare enough.

The President welcomed the government, singling out for special welcome "our brothers arriving from Damascus." He spoke of the Arab nation's own need for a unity that would bring it together, unify its own ranks, and give it a respected standing on the international stage. For this reason, the union of Egypt and Syria had to stand as an honorable example, one that would, one day, draw in the other Arab peoples as well.

But until that day came, the ministers of the Republic needed to combine their own efforts, to meet the Union's own requirements and support it, and the very first thing to be established was that there was no such thing as a Syrian minister and an Egyptian minister, only a minister of the modern state, the United Arab Republic, entrusted with running one of its own vital departments, his own ministry.

He then turned to speak of socialism, a subject dear to his heart, and to ours as well, for we believed in it and were sincere in our devotion to it. Yet he insisted on making clear that this was not a socialism read out of books, borrowed from its own theorists and authors, but a socialism arising from our own Arab reality, that is, a purely Arab socialism, free of any impurity, one we apply according to need and interest, correcting whatever strays from its own proper course whenever necessary.

He did not forget to devote a lengthy discussion to individual property, on the necessity of protecting it and preserving it, though he insisted it remain "within the bounds of its own social function."

An incident occurred at this session that truly stunned me.

The President asked the (Egyptian) Minister of Education, Ahmad Naguib Hashem, to speak of his own ministry's achievements and needs. He spread a stack of papers before him, and began speaking as though he were Demosthenes himself, addressing the sons of Athens: "Over this past year, we have achieved 95 percent of our building projects, 93 percent of our need for teachers and instructors, and 91 percent of the opening of new schools."

These impressive figures stood as living proof of the Ministry of Education's own activity, an honorable sign of the diligent steps "the nation" was taking.

The President waited for the minister to finish speaking, without a single interruption, and when the minister turned to thank the President and the Council of Ministers for listening to him so attentively, and for their own patience with his long and complicated figures, the President turned to my colleague Ahmad Faraj, attending the session as Boghdadi's own aide, and asked him the Ministry of Planning's own view of the Ministry of Education's achievements. Ahmad Faraj said they did not match the figures we ourselves held, figures the Ministry of Education itself had sent us, figures of 16 percent, 37 percent, or thereabouts, far lower than these. "And here are the very papers sent to us," he said, holding up a neatly organized bundle of papers, waving it before the council.

Ahmad Naguib Hashem grew flustered, even as he insisted on his own achievements and figures.

Anger seized Abdel Nasser, and I had never seen him angry before this moment. He said: "This is a serious matter, and must be referred to a military court."

A few days later, Minister Hashem was transferred, as ambassador to Rome.

For it was never Abdel Nasser's own habit to abandon his ministers, so long as they had never reached out for illicit money.

Sunday the 27th

I spoke privately with Vice President Boghdadi, and explained to him my own state of health, and my own wish to give up ministerial work and return to Damascus University. I told him: I wanted to make my own wishes clear to you, not to continue in ministerial work, from the very first moments of our own cooperation, so that no doubt would ever creep into your own mind, one day, that I disliked working with you, or that I wished to return to my own country over some grievance against you.

He was the very picture of graciousness and courtesy.

He said he knew full well that I was among those sincerely devoted to the Union and the Republic, and that it was essential we not get ahead of events.

I found myself wondering: why is it that Egypt's own officers show such refinement and courtesy, while Syrian officers so often prove harsh and domineering?