Shaky at the helm

Al-Ahram: A Diwan of contemporary life (629)
Shaky at the helm
Mustafa had the poorest of government track records. Of the seven cabinets he formed, four were summarily dismissed in unprecedented fashion. Professor Yunan Labib Rizk examines why had such a difficult time holding down the job
Mustafa , who was the president of the Egyptian Wafd Party over a period stretching from the death of Saad Pasha Zaghloul (1927) to the July Revolution (1952), deserves the title "the only one dismissed". During the reigns of Fouad and Farouk, the royal palace did away with four of the seven governments formed during that period by dismissing them. Several observations on this issue immediately stand out. Throughout the history of the 71 governments formed in the period between the establishment of the ministerial system in August 1878 near the end of the reign of Khedive Ismail and the last of the governments during the age of the monarchy (June 1953), a period that equalled three quarters of a century, no governments were dismissed other than the four led by .
Among his other three governments, resigned from two for reasons related to the application of the constitution. The first time was on the occasion of King Farouk assuming his constitutional powers in July 1937. Custom required that he submit his resignation to the new lord of the crown so that he could entrust him to form a new government. The second time occurred following a dispute that broke out with the secretary of the Wafd and minister of finance Makram Ebeid Pasha that necessitated his dismissal and that of his supporters from the government and its subsequent re-formation in May 1942.
As for the third government, it was formed in early January 1930 with the specific goal of "negotiating with the English". King Fouad considered it to have exhausted its purpose after the negotiations failed, a fact the Wafd leadership sensed and in response placed popular pressure on Fouad. As part of this pressure it submitted its resignation, fancying that the king would not dare accept it. He disappointed and his colleagues, however, and accepted the resignation, turning the magic back on the magician.
The term "resignation" was not known upon the introduction of governments. The heads of the early governments left their eminent positions without a word. Later they employed the term "request for pardon". "Resignation" was first used with the government of Mohamed Said Pasha in April 1914.
The four dismissals that alone was subject to were handed out within the circumstances of a serious political crisis between the palace and the Wafd Party. They were, for the most part, not carried out until after the British official in the country, be he high commissioner or ambassador, gave the king the green light to expel the exalted leader and his government.
One of the strangest of these crises was that which transpired in December 1937, the month that ended with the dismissal of the fifth government. The Wafd government was at its peak of power at the time after having signed the 1936 treaty by which it thought that it would accomplish the evacuation of the British forces within the coming few years as well as the ridding of the capitulations system following Montreaux. Moreover, the new king was merely a young boy who had not reached his 18th year. The leader of the Wafd could not imagine that he would dare to dismiss the government as his experienced father had. And yet he did, under circumstances that created a kind of political drama. Let us begin with the first act.
ON MONDAY 29 NOVEMBER 1937 Al-Ahram informed its readers in large font on its front page of the following: "Reckless youth fires four bullets on the vehicle of Pasha -- rescue of the prime minister from the criminal attack and arrest of the perpetrator -- informing the public prosecutor of the incident -- Pasha's statement to Al-Ahram -- the Shubra assembly -- demonstrations -- the number of injured and their names."
The reckless youth, Ezzeddin Abdel-Qader, "grandson of the late Ahmed Orabi Pasha, of tall stature, thin frame and white tone, around 30 years of age, was wearing a grey suit over a green shirt, the uniform of Misr Al-Fatah. He had recently travelled to Palestine where he spent several weeks. He is a daily wage labourer in the Ministry of Agriculture, and when he was searched, seven piastres were found on him."
The incident: At 8.30 in the evening, Pasha was riding in his car to a political assembly in Shubra. He was followed by a guard vehicle carrying a constable and an officer. The perpetrator was hiding beneath the arcade of a nearby home. It was known that the vehicle of the pasha slowed down at the curve near the house, and as it turned, four bullets were fired on it. One hit the right door and made a hole in it. The guards hurried to get out and the perpetrator attempted to flee but he was surrounded and arrested 70 metres from the site of the incident. "The crowds would have slain him had the police not intervened."
After the car reached the junction of Ismail and Abbas streets, Pasha's narrative goes, "I heard the sound of shots, however I paid them no heed. But then I desired to know what had happened and I ordered the driver to stop and he stopped a few metres further. Then the constable who leads the car to open the way came and said that nothing had happened. So I ordered the driver to continue without knowing that a bullet had been fired on my vehicle. A moment later the constable returned and informed me that the vehicle of the police guard that follows my car had fallen behind for some unknown reason. I met Makram Pasha and invited him to accompany me as we were preparing to leave. The driver came with several policemen and they informed me that they had discovered that a bullet had struck the car and created a clear hole. I then realised that the sounds I had heard at the site of the incident had been the sounds of gunshots and I knew that a crime was involved."
continued his narrative by commenting on the apparel of the perpetrator: a Western suit over the dress of the "green shirts," which proved that he was from the Misr Al-Fatah group. When he realised that he had fallen into the grip of the law he screamed, "I've lost! They ruined me, may God ruin them!" Then he handed the guards the two pistols he was carrying.
The incident did not prevent Pasha from going to the Wafd committee assembly in Shubra where youths greeted him with extreme enthusiasm after having learnt of the assassination attempt. They carried him on their shoulders to the podium, where he gave a short speech ending with the Quranic verse, "God is the best protector and the most merciful." Afterwards they left in a clamorous demonstration heading towards the home of Mohamed Mahmoud Pasha, the president of the Liberal Constitutionalists and known for his close relationship with the leaders of Misr Al-Fatah. A girth of soldiers stood at the entrance to Falaki Street preventing the demonstrators from storming the house, yet the youths "pressured the soldiers until they removed them from their positions and burst forth on Falaki Street until they reached the door of the home of His Excellency Mahmoud Pasha. At that point the house guards opened fire in the air to frighten them and the soldiers attacked the demonstrators until they removed them from the site." Al-Ahram reported that there were 20 wounded among the victims and listed their names and professions. There was a tailor, baker, plumber, an ironer, cook, grocer, an electrician and a waiter. They belonged to professions that were prepared to join the "blue shirts" loyal to the Wafd.
This incident was the first shot in a battle that raged throughout December and transformed the winter cold into intense heat. Each player in the political game exploited it to his benefit. The Wafd Party attempted to shake up the Misr Al-Fatah group which it viewed as a tool of power in the hands of its adversaries, the Liberal Constitutionalists and the palace, in particular Ali Maher Pasha, the head of the royal cabinet. In contrast, King Farouk and his men saw it as an opportunity to pressure the Wafd to do away with the green and blue-coloured shirt organisations on the basis of their unconstitutionality. The whole matter ended with the dismissal of the government.
The morning following the incident a phone conversation took place between Pasha and the British ambassador Sir Miles Lampson. Its contents were later revealed by confidential British documents. The conversation began with the ambassador congratulating the prime minister on his rescue and that what had taken place had brought with it some good through the nation joining together behind him. He adjured him to commit to the policy of calm, but 's reply was replete with bitterness. He mentioned that shortly before the conversation, he had learnt from the minister of justice that the initial investigation had shown that the Italians were behind the incident and that parliament was occupied with issuing a decree to put into force a law banning the bearing of arms for foreigners and Egyptians alike. Moreover, King Farouk had not shown interest of note in the incident and had sent only one of his second-class guards to congratulate him on his safe rescue.
The first thing the government did following the incident was wage a wide-scale arrest campaign against members of Misr Al-Fatah. Naturally, it began with its head, Ahmed Hussein and several of its prominent leaders, including Fathi Radwan -- despite Radwan having submitted his resignation two months earlier -- Mustafa El-Wakil, Fouad Hamouda, Noureddin Tarraf, Mohamed Fadel, Ibrahim Shoukri and Hamada El-Nahel. In addition, members of the group in the provinces were also arrested by the political police starting in Mansoura, Alexandria and Qena. During the two days following the attempted attack on the prime minister, the number of detainees reached 174.
As usually happens in such campaigns following major events of this kind, some of the arrests were random and the public prosecutor thus soon released 28 of the detainees. Some of them voluntarily brought themselves before officials without being wanted, as occurred with Hussein Ahmed Hamadi. He walked in on his own to the public prosecutor and informed him that he knew they were arresting members of Misr Al-Fatah, that he was a member of the party's jihad council and that he had thus brought himself in. The prosecutor took his word and arrested him.
During this short period, a reader volunteered to write to Al-Ahram about the background of the suspect. It seems that he was afraid of being arrested himself and so sufficed with the first letter of his name, 'A', as a signature. His father was Tawfiq Bey Abdel-Qader, who had inherited a significant fortune from his first wife Karima Alaaeddin Pasha. In 1910 he married Karima Orabi Pasha who had been previously married to Hussein Fahmi Bey Kamel, and she bore him the perpetrator. Tawfiq's card-playing habit resulted in him losing everything. He lived the rest of his life on the edge "and after having ridden the stateliest of cars in his days of glory, he became a tired old man who covered long distances on foot." This situation affected his son, who did not receive an education that qualified him to be anything other than a daily wage earner at the Ministry of Agriculture.
While the ministries of internal affairs and justice were carrying out their missions of wide-scale arrests of green shirts and handing them over to trial, the Wafd Party was busy with a mission of its own, one that its leadership viewed as urgent: pressuring the king and the opposition by flexing its popular muscles.
About four days after the incident, Wafd parliamentarians and youth groups gathered in the Saadi Club and, led by himself, together headed to Saad Zaghloul's tomb on foot. There gave a speech in which he said, "the attack of an abominable criminal upon me does not harm me, for the fate of us all is oblivion and our souls are in the hands of God to deal with as He pleases." His speech was met with great enthusiasm.
In a massive popular demonstration the "exalted leader" visited his birthplace in Samanud. "In the towns he visited and in the villages he passed, he was met with overwhelming enthusiasm. The locals greeted him by cheering for his long life, and they waved at him tree branches and palm fronds. Several victory arches were fashioned of banana leaf and tree branches in celebration of him."
In a speech he gave before massive crowds in the city, repeated his condemnation of what he phrased "the grievous criminal incident" and which the "loyal, loving nation had adopted as an arena in which all its various groups, classes and institutions were competing to show their vitality and hidden power and to demonstrate the degree to which they are committed to he who granted himself to them and who they chose following Saad to lead their movement and renaissance. "Long live Saad's successor, long live the renaissance's leader!"
On his return, the train transporting Pasha stopped in Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra and Tanta where similar cheers were repeated. "Long live the constitution's savior, long live the hero of independence, with our souls and our funds, forever!" (It seems that the call "with our souls and our blood, we will sacrifice for so-and-so" has historical roots).
The demonstration rallying around the Wafd Party then transferred to parliament where the head of the senate gave a long statement in the 15 December session in which he condemned "that abominable incident and lowly crime undertaken by an idiotic greenhorn maniac whose vision was misguided and whose thought was blinded and thus let himself be seduced into attempting to deprive the country of the services of His Excellency."
The young king responded by visiting Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra on the occasion of what Al-Ahram called "Countryside Day". He commenced his visit from Al-Qubba Palace and drove the car himself. "The procession went forth with the blessing of God and surpassed the city limits and met the beginning of the countryside in Shubra, where decorations were up and the people gathered to greet the king. Many of them were in the middle of the road... The king returned his people's greeting with one hand, but soon, may God protect him, he preferred to return the assembled masses' greeting with his right and left hands, and left the driving seat to the driver. He stood in the open car gazing upon the greetings of fluttering hearts... The royal procession passed from Shubra to Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra between two lines of crowds gushing forth."
THE FIRST TO INTIMATE at what stood behind the Wafd's actions were correspondents for English newspapers. A correspondent's telegram to The Daily Telegraph stated that the antipathy between the palace and the government had reached its limits. "The situation has grown more critical due to the nominations for the senate. The government has decided to appoint one of its supporters as a member of the senate in the seat made vacant by the departure of Ali Maher Pasha. It overlooked the king's recommendation for nomination to the vacated seat; and the king delayed his approval of the government's selection of another nominee. The government then responded with a manoeuvre many considered an insult to the king: during the Feast bestowal of honours, four ministers failed to attend and sent telegraphs with their apologies."
The Daily Herald 's correspondent revealed another side to the crisis. Under the headline, "The young king creates a crisis", the paper wrote that there were serious constitutional strains between the king and and that they had begun with the appointment of Ali Maher as the head of the royal cabinet, creating a crisis difficult to settle.
The reporter for News Chronicle mentioned that there was a stifled crisis and that the country's previous state of affairs, when during King Fouad's reign the palace employed autocratic policies of dismissing the Wafd and dissolving parliament whenever the opportunity arose and depending on minority parties, was wavering on the horizon once again.
Given Al-Ahram 's custom of remaining neutral among competing parties during the escalation of crises, the newspaper preferred to transmit that published in other papers, and in particular from the mouthpieces of each side. It reported from the Wafdist Al-Misri information indicating a conflict between the palace and the Wafd Party over the issue of the army being involved in politics. While the immensely popular party was careful not to get involved in it, the royal palace consistently asserted the army's loyalty to the lord of the throne, the high commander. The Wafd Party raised this issue on the occasion of the Feast bestowal of honours when the Wafdist minister of war, Hamdi Seif El-Nasr Pasha, approached the king leading the officers, after it had been custom for the officers to be led by their commander to the king.
Al-Misri defended the actions of the Wafdist government by claiming that what had transpired was not counter to tradition. It presented precedents that indicated that this was not the first time the minister of war had led the officers, and described the reportage of the British newspapers on this incident as mere guesswork. This assertion was shored up by another Wafdist newspaper, Kawkab Al-Sharq.
When Wafdist newspapers began to insinuate that the king's attempt to bring the army into politics was a violation of the constitution, Al-Balagh, which supported the palace, stressed that no one was thinking of opposing the constitution. It stated that despite the rumours being spread, "no one doubts that His Majesty, lord of the throne, is constitutional in intent, thought, desire and feeling. He has declared so and that is known about His Majesty."
The crisis escalated after the government submitted to parliament what it called the "protection of constitutional law" and which would make it impossible, through the threat of legal measures, for any prime minister lacking a parliamentary majority to continue his term as long as he did not follow the rules of the constitution that stipulated holding general elections after dissolving the standing council. "There may not seem any danger in that, but the former prime ministers who governed without a parliamentary majority, and whom the Wafd intended, were all appointed by the palace."
The London Times commented on this by saying that the king was encouraged to move ahead with ridding himself of the government by the possibly unprecedented growth of opposition to the Wafd as led by El-Nuqrashi Pasha. "However, the attempted assassination of weakened this opposition even though it had no hand in it. The Wafd under the leadership of remains the party the Egyptians have chosen. And yet the Wafd would have had a longer opportunity to remain in this place had it exerted immense efforts in treating Egypt's social and economic problems rather than taking interest in passing a bundle of draft laws it views as a legal guarantee against despotism."
When the episodes of crisis clearly grew, Al-Ahram had to open up bigger space in its pages for its developments. The crisis occupied entire pages of the newspaper from 20 to 22 December. It suffices to read the headlines to grasp the developments. On 20 December: "The political situation: meetings and discussions to bring viewpoints closer to one another -- meeting between Ahmed Maher Pasha, Makram Ebeid Pasha and Sabri Abu Alam -- statements from the meeting -- on the position of Ahmed Maher".
On 21 December: "Meetings and discussions to address the political situation -- Emir Mohamed Ali meets His Majesty the King -- the British ambassador at the royal palace -- Makram Pasha meets Pasha -- ministerial meeting and an assembly of the Egyptian Wafd leadership -- enquiry of the Ahram office in London -- newspapers' comments."
And on 22 December: "Meetings of the president of the royal cabinet -- meeting of the cabinet under the leadership of His Excellency Pasha -- call for the Egyptian Wafd and the Wafd board to meet."
British documents reveal another side to the nature of the crisis. Sir Lampson wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in London and noted that the dispute fundamentally revolved around the issue of the "protections of constitutional law" and that he had tried to persuade the Wafd leadership that it was not necessary. Both and Makram held to their positions, however, and in the end this led Lampson to announce to all parties that he would neither stand with nor against any of them, effectively giving the king the green light to dismiss the government.
This drove the Wafd leadership to take action with its full force. It called for the Wafd board to meet on 23 December, a meeting that lasted nearly three hours and whose results were not known until the following day. Its outcomes included, firstly, that the nation's representatives and senate held trust in Pasha, "the nation's leader, and in his constitutional government, and support him completely in his current constitutional position." Secondly, it determined that "any Wafdist who betrays solidarity with the Wafd board and accepts the formation of any government or participates in the support of a government other than the current government headed by His Excellency Mustafa , the president of the Egyptian Wafd, is considered dismissed from the Wafd and the Wafd board as well as being outside the nation's unity and a factor in the weakening of its constitution."
When Maher made a statement in a meeting alongside and Ebeid, it was sensed that he would not refuse forming a new government if the king charged him to do so. Ebeid thus suggested that everyone present take the following oath: "I swear by God Almighty that I respect this decision in full and that I will implement it and not betray it as long as I live." Maher, Hamid Mahmoud and Ibrahim Abdel-Hadi refused to take the oath.
At that point, and after the palace's intentions to do away with the Wafdist government became clear, the Wafd mobilised its supporters to demonstrate. Yet what took place did not please the leaders of the Wafd Party. The university students split up among themselves, with some cheering for the long life of Pasha, others cheering for the long life of the king, and still others preferring to play it safe and cheering for the long life of both the king and , a situation that was repeated in the provinces.
What's more, the two sides exchanged attacks on each other's symbols. Maher was attacked by some of Pasha's supporters, while others attacked the car of Makram Pasha, 's strongman. This suggested to the royal palace's men that they take their final steps, which involved the dismissal of the fifth government.
On Friday 31 December 1937 Al-Ahram published the official documents relating to the government's dismissal. The royal decree ordering the dismissal included a charge that the government had violated the spirit of the constitution and failed to respect and defend public freedom. The order directed to Mohamed Mahmoud Pasha to form a new government included a demand that he work to "secure the country's unity and provide sources of stability for the policies on which rule is based". The "exalted leader" could do nothing following this resolution other than withdraw from the arena. His withdrawal lasted four years until he returned during the incident of 4 February 1942, but that's another story.