Chapter 11, Part 3: The Election of Shukri al-Quwatli as President

Section One
The Election of Shukri al-Quwatli as President of the Republic

Article 76 of the 1950 Constitution provides as follows:

"The Chamber of Deputies elects the President of the Republic before the end of the term of the sitting President, at most one month and at least fifteen days beforehand."

Since Article 73 sets the President's term at five full years, the term of President al-Atassi would end on 6 September 1955. It was therefore decided to hold the election of a President of the Republic on 15 August, in keeping with the provisions of Article 76 cited above.

This election has an exciting story, whose episodes took place behind the scenes in the Chamber.

A special meeting of representatives of the parties and parliamentary blocs was held in one of its halls, and I attended it as the delegate of the People's Party. Among those present whom I remember were Messrs. Sabri al-Asali, the Prime Minister (National Party), Akram al-Hourani and Salah al-Bitar (Baath Party), Muhammad al-Mubarak (Muslim Brotherhood), Munir al-Ajlani (the Free Bloc, which had ten deputies), Khalid Bakdash and Abd al-Baqi Nizam al-Din. From the outset the meeting agreed on nominating Rushdi al-Kikhya for the presidency. I proposed that a document be written to that effect, and it was written. Those present signed it, stating that they agreed to elect Rushdi al-Kikhya President of the Republic and were bound by this signature.

I carried the paper to al-Kikhya at the Orient Palace Hotel, where he usually stayed in Damascus. He looked at it for a long while, then raised his head sadly and said that he thanked his brothers who had honored him with this unanimous charge, but that he nonetheless declined to accept, not to escape the weight of the responsibility but because the circumstances were not favorable.

And I know what those words meant.

They meant that he did not want to enter into a direct conflict with the politicized officers, who held the destinies of the armed forces in their hands under the pretext of not throwing the country into the arms of foreign pacts. Every attempt to dissuade him from declining came to nothing.

The People's Party had always been committed to keeping the armed forces out of politics, so that they would not be dragged into an internal conflict that might turn into an armed clash.. Rushdi al-Kikhya was firmly convinced that there was no use and no benefit for the country in kindling the fire of enmity between the civilian politicians and the politicized men of the army. He saw these politicized soldiers as officials who had broken the provisions of the Constitution and the law alike.. This is true, and the written texts state it plainly.

Article Thirty of the Constitution (the 1950 Constitution) provides as follows:

1. The defense of the homeland and of the Constitution is a sacred duty of all citizens.

2. Military service is compulsory and is regulated by a special law.

3. The army is the guardian of the homeland, and its mission is confined to defending the borders of the homeland and its safety.

This text needs no commentary. It makes all citizens equal in military duties and treats the army as the guardian of the homeland, protecting it from every aggression that comes from outside, or from inside in the event of a local danger breaking out. But its mission does not extend beyond defending the homeland to engaging in political activity at home or interfering in public affairs.

No one forbids a soldier from holding a political opinion as he likes and pleases. And if he wants to have his say in political work, by joining a political party for instance, that too is his right, but he must leave the army and return to civilian life.

It is the people who buy the army its weapons, and the people who supply it with fighting men from among their sons. The weapons and the soldiers are therefore a trust in the hands of their officers, who are to look after them, train them and prepare them for the day of danger and for meeting it, not to send them out at night to the homes of the men of government whom the people freely elected, to throw them into detention camps and set themselves at the head of power.. At that point the struggle for power diverts them from their proper duties.

This is the usurpation of power that the Penal Code punishes (Articles 291, 292, 293, 294 and 296 of the Penal Code).

Likewise, the Military Penal Code, issued by Legislative Decree No. 61 dated 27/2/1950, prohibits soldiers from joining political parties and from taking part in political activity, on pain of the penalties laid down in Article 147 and the articles following it in that code. The penalties of hard labor and detention laid down in these articles carry with them military degradation, which means loss of rank and expulsion from the army (Article 165).

It should be noted that these texts are still in force, and they were amended only once, by Law No. 152 of 1959, in the direction of greater severity (in the days of the union with Egypt). Where soldiers break the provisions of the law and enter the political arena, Rushdi al-Kikhya's view was that one must not go into battle with them, because the situation on the border with Israel did not allow such a dangerous game.

That is why he preferred to keep away from a clash with them.

That was our view too in the party's bureau.

This is a stand marked by national courage, because it spares the country a ruinous conflict between its two wings, the military and the civilians, and it is not marked by weakness or faintheartedness.. so long as the burden of government is a path to serving the homeland and not to securing private gain.

It was from this starting point that the dispute broke out between the People's Party and the parties that leaned on the armed forces and drew their support from them, because of the weakness of their popular base.. Nor was the scene short of people who cared about nothing except sitting in the chairs of power, regardless of who put them there or of the dark circumstances in which they moved.

Once it was certain that al-Kikhya had declined to let himself be nominated for the presidency, since the office was of no use amid the crisis of dual rule, two prominent candidates came forward: Shukri al-Quwatli and Khalid al-Azm.

Personally, I was not inclined to elect President al-Quwatli, for several reasons. He had been removed from power by a military coup.. and the country greeted the overthrow of his rule with indifference, if I do not say with delight. Then again, it was he who harnessed the state to amend the Constitution so that he could be re-elected in 1948, and we had with his supporters in the Chamber that well-known fistfight. On top of that, he was a man who looked to the past, to his own glories, whereas the general situation called for a president who looked to the future and could adapt to events, yielding when they yielded and hardening when they hardened. He was also faulted for having lived outside the country for more than six years, which he spent in Egypt as a refugee, so that he had lost touch with the social and economic changes that had taken place in the country in the wake of several military coups.

The second candidate was Khalid al-Azm. He was a politician who did not enjoy serious support inside the Chamber. But he put himself forward with his eye on the backing of those who disliked Shukri al-Quwatli, openly or in secret.. He found political support in a bloc made up entirely of scattered deputies, and Akram al-Hourani lent him the support of 17 deputies, to whom was added Khalid Bakdash, "the second of the two Khalids" who had won in the Damascus elections.. the red pasha and the dapper communist.. The English author Patrick Seale described al-Azm as "an opportunist".[1]

When the People's Party held a meeting of its bureau to choose the candidate its deputies would vote for.. the discussion was easy. Not a single voice was raised in favor of electing Khalid al-Azm. Even those who were not with al-Quwatli held their breath, because between the two candidates the choice was settled among us in al-Quwatli's favor. Whatever else, he had a spotless record in the struggle against the colonizer in the days of the Mandate, and nothing had stained his reputation apart from what we held against him during his second presidency.

The politicized officers took the side of his rival and backed his candidacy with all the influence they could muster. They even resorted to vulgar methods: they sent two military cars that stopped in front of the parliament, and the officers and soldiers riding in them shouted the foulest abuse at al-Quwatli, which stirred sympathy for him and disgust with them. I saw this scene with my own eyes; I did not hear of it from others. And so we took our decision collectively that he must be elected.

Khalid al-Azm believed that the man who had led the opposition to him within the People's Party was Rushdi al-Kikhya himself.. and so he never forgave him for it.. Had he been fair in his analysis of the political situation at the time, he would have realized that opposing him meant, first and foremost, opposing the dual rule of the country.. in which he had made himself a front for the politicized officers.. I say a front, because no one believed in his so-called "leftism".. this man who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.. Rushdi al-Kikhya always remembered the story of that little slip of paper.. At one session of the Council of Ministers, in the last days of al-Hinnawi's era, when the atmosphere was electric, al-Azm wrote a word on a small piece of paper and tossed it to Akram al-Hourani, who picked it up, read it and then dropped it in the ashtray. Al-Kikhya picked it up and read it, and it said: Do not rush your decision. Just two days later, al-Shishakli's coup took place.

On 15 August the vote for the head of state was held. It ended in victory for al-Quwatli with 92 votes, while al-Azm received 41 votes, and five blank ballots and two spoiled ones were found in the box.. out of 139 deputies who cast their votes.

"Amid the congratulations it was noticed that President al-Quwatli's welcome to the delegation of People's Party deputies was very warm. He expressed to them his appreciation of the generous feeling their party had shown toward him.. This party had taken a praiseworthy stand in the election of President al-Quwatli, supporting his election frankly and clearly despite the inducements offered to it by those who opposed his election. But the People's Party rejected all of that and held to its position and its decision."[2]

As soon as the results were out, some of the ministers realized that their blocs together did not have the support of the Chamber, and Khalid al-Azm hastened to resign from the cabinet, followed by Dr. Wahib al-Ghanim, Minister of Health and Public Relief.. one of the leading figures of the Baath.

President al-Quwatli took the constitutional oath before the Chamber of Deputies on 6 September 1955 and assumed the duties of his office as President of the Syrian Republic for the third time.. He was accompanied to the Chamber by Hashim al-Atassi, the president whose term ended that day.

President al-Quwatli tried to form a national government, but the Baathists decided not to take part in power. They broadcast a statement in which they said that the office of the presidency was not convinced of the foreign policy on which the (previous) coalition government had been based, and that it judged officials and politicians by the line they leaned toward and the forces that backed them, not by their personal qualities and intentions..

A meeting was held at the presidential palace, attended by representatives of the blocs in the Chamber, except the Baathists. The People's Party was represented there by Rushdi al-Kikhya and Ali Bouzo.. Those present proposed to the President of the Republic that Dr. Nazim al-Qudsi be asked to form the new government, but al-Qudsi firmly refused to accept the task. This refusal was in keeping with the stand of Rushdi al-Kikhya, who had declined to be nominated for the presidency..

In the end it was agreed to ask Mr. Said al-Ghazzi (the calm, independent politician) to form the cabinet. He formed it on 13 September 1955 from the People's Party, the National Party and some independents.

In it I took the Ministry of Finance. Ali Bouzo took the Ministry of the Interior, Rizqallah Antaki the Ministry of the National Economy and Rashad Barmada the Ministry of Defense.. It won the confidence of the Chamber by a majority of 89 votes to 31.

I learned the news that I had been chosen for the Ministry of Finance while I was in Europe.. on two missions: in the first I headed the Syrian delegation to the first congress on the prevention of crime, organized by the United Nations in Geneva, and in the second I took part in the Syrian parliamentary delegation charged with visiting the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.

Our visit to the two Eastern countries was extremely exciting. But I hold back my pen from going into it, because I do not write about myself.

It is a pity that time proved true what we had expected of President al-Quwatli. His term began weak before the domination exercised by the political officers and the civilians who moved in their orbit, and it stayed weak until it came to an end with the establishment of the union, which rescued him from the predicament he had put himself in.

The President tried to breathe new life into the nerves of his rule by bringing the National Party and the People's Party closer together, or even merging them.

Mr. As'ad al-Kourani spoke of this attempt, saying:

"President al-Quwatli summoned me during a visit he made to Aleppo, just as he summoned Mr. Izzat al-Saqqal, Ahmad Khalil al-Mudarris and some of the neighborhood notables.. I answered the call. The President spoke and said that he had asked us to come because government was in a bad state on account of the army's control over it, in a socialist direction that threatened a broad swing to the left. This situation could be stood up to only by an agreement between the National Party and the People's Party, or by their merger. He asked us to work to reconcile them."

Mr. al-Kourani adds "that he and the colleagues he named visited Rushdi al-Kikhya, who agreed to the idea on conditions, and visited Mikhail Ilyan (the actual head of the National Party), who surprised them by saying he was determined to work with the socialists because they were the effective force, and that he hoped to gain control over them."

Time would show that this veteran politician (Ilyan) was planning one thing while pretending another. It was only a year and a little more before his fate was sealed as a politician steeped in conspiracies, and he left the country in flight, never to return.

Wilbur Crane Eveland, head of American intelligence in the Middle East, states in his book "Ropes of Sand"[3] that he personally worked, with the approval of the American ambassador in Damascus, Mr. "Moose", and with the efforts of the Iraqi ambassador Abd al-Jalil al-Rawi, to bring the People's and National parties closer together. In a meeting with Rushdi al-Kikhya he asked what the United States could do to get the two parties to set their differences aside, but Rushdi al-Kikhya answered him "that the time had passed", and so he came out of the meeting disappointed and astonished.

Rushdi al-Kikhya was convinced that the age now belonged to progress and not to the views of "the old guard" and the promptings of "American intelligence" and the like.

Endnotes:

[1] In his book The Struggle for Syria, p. 330.

[2] Nasuh Babil, Sahafa wa Siyasa (Journalism and Politics), p. 462.

[3] Printed by Dar Tlass, translated into Arabic by Dr. Suhayl Zakkar, p. 222.