Chapter 12, Part 4: The Years of Anxiety: Al-Kikhya Resigns

The People's Party alone was the target.. because it was fighting dual rule.

For example:

Mr. Ahmad Qanbar criticized some items in the budget submitted to the Chamber for debate and approval.. which is the first duty of a deputy.. and all at once Mr. Khalid Bakdash volunteered to launch an attack on the People's Party for no reason at all.. Among other things he said:

"Syria will go forward on this road, and no force will turn it aside. At home it relies, before anything else, on the unity of the people and on this great brotherhood between the army and the people, and in the Arab sphere on this great brotherhood between Syria and Egypt"... But a year later, when the union between Egypt and Syria was established, he left the country and refused to go along with the union.. His party later broke apart.. and his followers rebelled against his course![1]

To calm the atmosphere of the debate, the Prime Minister, Sabri al-Asali, spoke, saying:

"We do not regard the critics' criticism of this budget as political criticism. Those who agree and those who disagree look at it as they would at any earlier budget put before the Chamber, and it would be better for the reply to take a different form from the usual one.

And in political direction we are all equal in this Chamber, since we concluded a charter of our own free will and with our views agreed on its political side, so there is no one better and no one lesser."

I would like to digress here a little, and recall that the People's Party, seeing the domination of the few over government by every means available to them, and having no wish to see dual rule continue, decided at a meeting held at my house in the summer of 1957 to suspend its political activity and confine itself to watching the situation, and charged me with informing the Chief of Staff, Major General Afif al-Bizri, of this decision.

He received me as a friend more than as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, and I informed him of the decision. He said it was a conspiracy whose aim was for foreign radio stations to seize on it and "claim" that there were no freedoms in Syria.. And he made suggestions to me that would not have raised my dignity in my own eyes.

I return to the biggest event of that session.

After a long silence, and in an ugly atmosphere of hypocrisy and flattery, Rushdi al-Kikhya stood up and gave the last speech of his political life, a life full of honorable stands, saying:

"The time has come for us, Mr. Speaker (Akram al-Hourani, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies), to speak frankly to one another. I told the Prime Minister that we are anxious to close the door on the slanging matches that electrify the atmosphere, at a time when we are in the greatest need of cohesion, mutual support and harmony, given the dangers surrounding the country. But the Prime Minister gave a curt and inadequate answer.. so I decided to speak myself..

You know that no budget has ever been put before the Chamber without coming in for sharp criticism, financial and political. It never occurred to any of us to interpret the remarks made about the sections of the budget and their financial and political effects as serving colonialism or sowing fear and spreading terror among the people. Whoever spoke, his colleagues took his words in good faith and as a wish for reform, and he was received with every welcome by the government and its supporters.. If we went back to the speech Khalid Bakdash gave criticizing the previous budget, we would see that he spared nothing in criticizing its sections and chapters and the government policy on which the budget rests.

So I ask His Excellency the Speaker not to give room to such accusations, made wildly on every occasion and on none.. Is their purpose to spread anxiety and disorder among the people, or is it that Syria should pass from the normal state in which it lives now to another state of disorder and turmoil? If we looked for the causes that led to the breaking up of the united Arab states that had concluded agreements among themselves, we would find that the bond broke because of the methods followed by Khalid Bakdash and his like..

We have worked hard for the independence of this homeland, and everyone has had an ample share in building this lofty edifice. But the methods being followed now will shake this building.. The greatest danger of all to our homeland is that its home front should fall apart. These methods of stirring up the people and dividing them, and of branding every word or criticism as serving colonialism, are the sure destruction of the people's existence..

I have become firmly convinced that if things go on like this, it is not unlikely that Syria will become a stage for turmoil and disorder, as is now happening in some Arab countries.

And I tell you frankly that I have come to believe that I cannot carry out my parliamentary duties toward the people in such an atmosphere as the one we live in, nor bear responsibility toward those who placed their trust in me.. And I say to our colleague Bakdash that he knows who fought the foreigner and who went to prison.. It seems that he now wants disorder and turmoil to spread through all the Arab countries.

For these reasons I resign from the Chamber."

Ahmad Qanbar rounded on those who could find no constructive work to offer the country and so had turned to tearing others down and to the methods of incitement.. and declared "from this rostrum that I oppose this government in its foreign, Arab, domestic and economic policy, and that as a deputy in this Chamber, within the law and the Constitution, I will work for unrelenting opposition to it, because I believe that every day it continues is harm and ruin for the country.."

I gave a speech in which I said that no one believed what one of the ministers (Fakhir al-Kayyali) had said about Ahmad Qanbar, and that he himself did not believe it.. I proposed that the matter be closed to avoid its grave consequences, and together with Mr. Raif al-Mulqi I put forward a motion in which we said:

"Whereas the charge leveled at Mr. Ahmad Qanbar by Mr. Fakhir al-Kayyali (conspiring against the safety of the state) was made at a stormy session and in a fit of anger, and whereas we are certain that its author did not really mean what he said, and that the Chamber holds Mr. Ahmad Qanbar above such a charge, we therefore ask that the matter be considered closed at this point.."[2]

The text of al-Kikhya's resignation follows:

His Excellency the Speaker of the honorable Chamber of Deputies.

I hereby inform Your Excellency of my resignation from the Chamber of Deputies, offering Your Excellency and my honorable colleagues my best wishes, with deep respect.

1/6/1957 Rushdi al-Kikhya

When the Speaker read out this letter of resignation, a deep silence of shock and astonishment fell over the deputies. Pens froze in our fingers and we exchanged stunned looks, unable to believe what we had heard; even al-Kikhya's opponents were stunned by the surprise.

On the darkest night the full moon is missed.

Akram al-Hourani, the Speaker, announced that the resignation could not be accepted in this session, because the Rules of Procedure forbid the discussion of any subject other than the budget during the budget session.

The Prime Minister, Sabri al-Asali, supported him in postponing the discussion.

The Speaker put the postponement to the vote, and hands went up unanimously in favor.

I do not know what the consciences of the wrongdoers felt in that dark hour!

After this session Rushdi al-Kikhya never came back to the hall of the Chamber, and the country lost in him a deputy of unbending firmness and a man of principle, whom office never tempted and who never reached out for ill-gotten money.. And his brothers followed his way, taking his exemplary conduct as their model and holding fast to the principles of integrity that marked their conduct and sprang from the depths of their convictions.

Many efforts were made to persuade him to withdraw his resignation.. Among these generous efforts was the invitation President Gamal Abdel Nasser sent him to visit him in Cairo. He accepted the invitation in the autumn of 1957, but he never spoke of what happened at the meeting.[3] The invitation was understood as a splendid tribute to a sincere leader and a free, moderate nationalist.

It is certain that President Abdel Nasser had a precise knowledge of the hidden side of Syrian politics, which in any case had few secrets.. His ambassador in Damascus, Mr. Mahmoud Riad, was in close touch with all the parties, political bodies and influential officers.

I was one of those he kept in touch with. So great was our regard for Egypt, with which we were all calling for union, that we once formed one of the Syrian governments in Ambassador Riad's office, and I represented the People's Party in those talks.

Mahmoud Riad spoke of Rushdi al-Kikhya in his memoirs, saying the following:[4]

"My conversations were not confined to the Baath Party; I was in constant contact with all the politicians, especially the men of judgment and standing in the country, such as Rushdi al-Kikhya and Nazim al-Qudsi.

Rushdi, the head of the People's Party, was respected by everyone. He was clean of tongue and above seeking office, and he refused to stand for the presidency of the Republic despite the insistence of the members of his party.[5]

He refused all the ministerial posts offered to him. He believed in true democracy and rejected rule by the army or dual rule, and he faulted the Baath Party for gaining strength and influence through individuals in the armed forces.

I saw the importance of his meeting Abdel Nasser. He represented the conservative national political current. This meeting with Abdel Nasser left a good impression on both sides.

Rushdi al-Kikhya was a believer in Arab unity, and he agreed with me about the dangers the union could face unless sound steps were taken to protect it. When the union was put before the Syrian Chamber of Deputies, Rushdi al-Kikhya was among those who supported it strongly."

This is an honorable and sincere testimony from an Egyptian who would have been expected to say otherwise had there been any truth in what the malicious spread about the People's Party in general and Rushdi al-Kikhya in particular; but only the worthy know worth.

The party discussed al-Kikhya's resignation and was ready for a collective resignation in solidarity with its leader, but he, God rest his soul, refused any step of the kind, because the country's anxious state could bear no shock, and because our presence in the Chamber might render some legal or humane service, if we were kept from political service.

Rushdi al-Kikhya did not come back to the Chamber of Deputies after this session except once, when the union with Egypt was put to the vote; he cast his vote in its favor, left the hall and never returned to it again.

The emptiness he left behind remained truly desolate, because no one was found to fill it with Rushdi al-Kikhya's integrity and his rare political ability.

And we, his brothers, kept missing his wise leadership whenever our eyes fell on his customary seat in that immortal hall.

But that was his wish!

Endnotes:

[1] Imad Naddaf published in Damascus in 1993 a book entitled "Khalid Bakdash Yatahaddath" (Khalid Bakdash Speaks), in which he devoted a separate chapter to Mr. Bakdash's view of Arab unity.

[2] See the minutes of the session of 11 May 1957, p. 819.

[3] On this see: Khalid al-Azm, the Memoirs, vol. 3, p. 118, and Patrick Seale, p. 419.

[4] Part Two, Beirut 1986, p. 204.

[5] In fact all the parties and blocs offered him the presidency.