DID THE ARAB SOCIALIST UNION UNDER NASSER PLAY ANY REAL POLITICAL ROLE OR FULFIL ANY CLEAR NEED

The Political Role of the Arab Socialist Union under Nasser's Regime
DID THE ARAB SOCIALIST UNION UNDER NASSER PLAY ANY REAL POLITICAL ROLE OR FULFIL ANY CLEAR NEED
By
KAMAL M .M .ALASTAL
(Chairperson) Department of Political Sciences
Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences
Al-Azhar University of Gaza
POBox: 1277-Gaza- Gaza Strip
Telfax: 00972-7-2053949
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E-Mail: peacearab@yahoo.com
A paper presented to the International Conference on
Political Transition in the Arab World:
Historical, Theoretical, Comparative, and Present Perspectives
Birzeit University 2-3/12-1999
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POBox (14)- Berzeit-Palestine
2- December 1999
The Political Role of the Arab Socialist Union under Nasser's Regime
DID THE ARAB SOCIALIST UNION UNDER NASSER PLAY ANY REAL POLITICAL ROLE OR FULFIL ANY CLEAR NEED
1.Analysis of the question and argument
In order to answer this question, I would like to start with the following argument: whether this question is based on an accurate understanding of the political role; then one can raise many other questions such as what is the nature of the Arab Socialist Union (ASU)? Why did Nasser’s regime create it? What was its real role? Did it fulfill any clear need? what were the Nasser’s aims from creating the ASU?
What is meant by vague and relative concepts like “real" and "clear" in this context? While one considers a role as a "real " one and a need as a "clear" one, someone else, on the other hand, may consider them neither "real " nor "clear" .
We have understood the "clear" political need in a twofold way: one, that the ASU may result in a restructuring of the perceived post-colonial political system insofar as it goes to cement the ground for the building of a civic society, and to retrench the gains of Arab socialization and political independence on the grass- root level; and two, did the ASU assist in disseminating the Nasserite ideology and legitimizing Nasser's policy.
Here, the political role can be understood in two different ways: the first, the ASU's political role at the service of the regime, and the second, the ASU's political role as a democratic channel and as a tool of popular expression and will .1
If one understands the political role in the first way, one can argue that ASU played a real political role as an organ of the Nasser’s regime. However, if one looks at the ASU in the second way, one can argue that it played a real political role as a mass party.
I argue that the ASU did play a real political role as an arm of the Nasser's regime. Moreover, the ASU did fulfill a clear need of the regime. However, the ASU did not play a real political role as a channel of popular political participation. At the same time it did not fulfill any clear need of the Egyptian people.2
2. My suggested model of analysis
In evaluating the ASU’s role, it is necessary to analyze it within the framework of the entire political system and explore some of the problems that had been involved in an attempt to establish a party from the top, that is, by a government .
In fact the party was never meant an active institution with decision-marking powers, but was conceived basically as a civic association to mobilize the people in an effort to stimulate social and economic development. Indeed, it was viewed as a means of mobilizing political support to the regime than as a vehicle for the popular participation. So one can say that:
A) The ASU played a "political role" for the Nasser's regime. Meanwhile, the ASU's political role as a "mass party” was very limited and marginal.
B) The ASU fulfilled some of the Nasser's regime needs. At the same time, it failed in fulfilling any clear need for the Egyptian people.
C) The Nasser’s regime created the ASU as an integral part of the regime to affect the people and not to receive an actual feedback of the popular influence.
D) The word “real” and “clear” are vague and relative. One can look at them from different, and sometimes, even contradictive, perspectives.
E) I may look at the relation among the regime, the ASU, and the people in different ways such as :
The regime The ASU The people
The ASU Affects the people and not viceversa
The ASU was created from above not from the below.
The ASU never developed much autonomy of the regime.
The ASU didn’t assume any real popular political role and it didn’t fulfill any clear popular need.
The ASU Failed to play the perceived and ascribed role and didn’t fulfill the expectations at the official and popular levels.
3. My analysis will deal with these hypotheses:
3.1. The ASU played a political role.
3.2. The political role of the ASU was at the Nasser’s regime service.
3.3. As for the answer of the question: did the ASU play a real political role? My answer is YES and NO:
Yes, because the ASU played only a real political role from the Nasserist regime's point of view. No, because the ASU did not play a real political role as a popular political party.
3.4.There was a need to create the ASU as an organ of the Egyptian bureaucracy to influence the political behaviour of the people. However, it did not fulfill a clear need of the people.
3.5. I consider the ASU as an integral part of the regime and not as a channel to affect the regime and the decision- makers
3.6. The ASU was a part of the suprastructure. So, it was created from above not from the popular bases.
3.7. The charismatic relationship between the people and their president initiated a direct linkage, thus weakened the institutions (viz. the ASU) considerably as independent, power–yielding, decision–making organs.3
3.8. Nasser failed to institutionalize and democratize his regime. So, the ASU actually died with the death of his founder.
3.9. The promised and perceived political role and need for the ASU were greater than the ensuing reality. Because contrary to Nasser's hopes, control continued to flow in the opposite direction, from the state authorities to the ASU.
4. The nature of the ASU: a mass-party vs. a governmental organ
I argue that the ASU was all but no more than a governmental organ and it failed to play the role of a mass party. It seems clear that there is a contradiction between an authoritarian regime and a mass
After 1962, Nasser regime built a single party named as the Arab socialist Union (ASU), tying it to the society through a pyramid of assemblies and committees, but like the parliament, the party never developed much autonomy or assumed any real functions. It never became an elite recruitment mechanism. Its leaders were imposed from above .4 (see table 1and 2).
Nasser’s regime was essentially personalistic and bureaucratic. Several structures were created, but they never achieved much autonomy of the government. 5
The ASU, in the National Charter, became the country’s single political organization. Its basic units were formed in villages and towns. Members of the basic unit elected twenty-man committee, which meets twice monthly and holds office for two years; the members themselves constitute the basic unit conference, which is supposed to meet every four months. Each basic unit committee elects two members to represent it at the next level -the district (markaz)– and these elected members form the district conference, which meets twice yearly and itself elects a district council to meet twice monthly.
From each of the district councils two members are elected to represent them at the next level -the governorate ( muhafazah) which also has a conference and an elected council .6 The only difference from the lower level is that members are elected for four instead of two years. Above the governorates at the national level there is a general conference of the ASU, composed of members of the governorate councils and also representatives of the army, police, women’s associations, workers and peasants,7 and other community groups. The general conference meets every two years, but it elects a general council to meet every six months, and the general council, in turn, elects a twenty-five members higher executive committee.8
Dessouki argues that in Egypt, as in many developing countries, the single party claimed to be a Gameinschaft party, an integrated mass movement unifying society, providing morale leadership and establishing popular consensus.9
5. The ASU: One-party system vs. a “front” for one-man rule: (Institutionalization vs. personalization)
Nasser won popular support not only because his charisma but also the fact that he managed to raise right slogans at the right time ( i.e. national liberation). From historical point of view, the people of Egypt worshiped and adored their rulers. This was connoted by the personalisation of the regime. As a result, when Nasser disappeared, his policies and political structures withered as well . 10
The ASU represents Nasser’s last attempt in the continuous, but frustrating, search for formula of organized mass support, and a basis for a permanent institutionalized political structure. Nasser’s regime failed in its attempt at building a single-party system.11 In the final analysis, I argue that the ASU was merely a “front” for Nasser’s autocratic regime.
The single-party system spread in the third world in the fifties and sixties. The ASU was conceived to be a vehicle for economic development, a symbol of national unity and an instrument for human and social mobilization. The ASU failed to accomplish any of these goals. Neither economic development nor national integration was achieved. 12
Nasser exerted a magnetic hold on the masses . According to one Egyptian historian “our people became attached to some of their rulers to a degree of approaching mania and worship, as in the case of the president Nasser. The people regarded him as divine”13. The adoration for Nasser obscured the authoritarian features of the regime and marginalized the role of the ASU.
6. The ASU: to fill the political vacuum vs. to win loyalties of the masses
In the 1950s, the Nasser regime began to create the first of a series of one-party organizations to replace the multiparty system. The government announced that these political structures would give the Egyptian masses an opportunity to participate in the new revolutionary political order.
Baker argues that the Liberal regarded these parties (the
Liberation Rally, the National Union;, and the ASU) as efforts to
fill the political vacuum created by the dissolution of the Wafd and
other parties “with artificial organizations that found no real echo or response from the people “.14
In fact, the regime itself recognized that the successive
Nasserite parties never succeeded in winning the political loyalties
of the masses.15
The ASU ignored all the abuses of power by the government. So, instead of controlling the government, the ASU was controlled by it. In other words, the ASU was dominated by the government at the top and paralyzed by the mass indifference below. It had failed to function as an effective elite-mass link. 16
The banning of all political parties produced a vacuum which the Nasser’s regime intended to fill it up . 17
7. The ASU: between the ideological weakness and Marxist’s penetration ( Loyalty vs. adversity)
The Free Officers lacked a clear ideology. Arab socialism
later became the country’s guiding ideology. 18 The ASU was created by a presidential decree. 19
Following the formation of the ASU, in 1962, there was so much socialist rhetoric indicating “a drift to left”. In 1956, the Egyptian Communist party voted to dissolve itself and support Nasser. The Communist policy was then to create a revolutionary political cadre within the ASU. The Communists wanted to gain influence in the ASU. One of the Egyptian left-wings remarked that “Nasser wanted to build socialism without socialists”.20
With the idea of creating some sort of cooperation with the left, a number of the Communist intellectuals were freed from the prison to be brought into the organization.21
The organizational and ideological void at the heart of the regime enabled the Communists to create a socialist vanguard within the ASU.22 They created and manipulated a secret apparatus within the ASU.
The tensions between Nasser and the ASU reflected on the ideological plane. It is noteworthy, that the ideological conflict was but one manifestation of more fundamental misgivings on Nasser’s part that the ASU was being exploited as a base for rival political power (power centers i.e. Ali Sabri and the Communists). 23
After Nasser, Sadat had to purge these communist elements, in his so-called “ the Corrective Revolution “.24 More than a hundred ASU members as well as Ali Sabri, the Secretary General of the ASU were imprisoned.25
8. The ASU: an arm of bureaucracy vs. mass-party
The ASU remained more of a bureaucratic than popular body.
It was bureaucratic in the way it was built. Ayubi argues that “historical precedent suggests that the single-party systems tend to develop around a party (or a popular or national movement) which is usually formed from the bottom upwards while still outside government”.26
However, There was a situation where, instead of a political party running a state, Egypt’s state was trying to breathe life into a party.27
Although, the ASU membership had reached to some five or six million, the real power in the ASU had always remained concentrated on a few personalities who kept moving between the government and the ASU. 28
Nasser made it plain that the ASU would not have any executive power. He seemed to have intended it chiefly as a means of mobilizing popular support behind the socialist policies and as a forum for the political education of the humbler classes.29 However, the ASU indoctrination campaign achieved only limited success in its efforts to popularize socialism. 30
Indeed, the whole functioning of the ASU was not at all separated from administrative activity. Furthermore, there was little in the headquarters of the ASU to remind a visitor that he was in the residence of a political party. 31
9. The ASU: a tool of absolute power and dictatorship vs. masses
Sadat argues that the ASU later turned into an instrument for wielding absolute power and exercising control over every thing, even people’s livelihoods. 32
Moreover, in the public’s mind the ASU was considered the “government’s party”. Like any government authority, it had an elaborate administrative organization. The bureaucratization of the ASU led it to be virtually a part of the state machinery, isolated from the masses. It also lacked sincere members and developed little two-way communication with the masses . 33
As it was later admitted, even at the official level, the ASU tended to follow a “desk” or “ bureaucratic” approach that put barriers between it and the masses, “ barriers which were only strengthened by the ASU’s perception of its role as that of explaining and justifying the acts of the executive power “. 34
The ASU was also becoming a new stage for “empire building” and furthering the interests of its own staff. 35
Towards the end of the sixties, the ASU was developing less as a mass movement or revolutionary party and more as a governmental department manned by “routinist civil servants”. 36
10. The ASU: a nominal politicisation of the people
Nasser defined the ASU as a coalition or alliance (tahaluf) of all working forces (al qiwa al’amilah): peasants, workers, intellectuals, soldiers, and native capitalists.
National leaders of the ASU were selected by Nasser to fill the posts in the Supreme Executive Committee and the Secretariat. The constitution of the ASU stipulated that a National Congress and a Central Committee were to be formed by elections, but these organs were never constituted. 38 (see appendices: tables 3&4 ). The ASU failed in achieving a real politicisation of the masses.39
Meanwhile, the regulation that reserves 50% of the seats for workers and peasants continues to be among the most hated aspects of the ASU from the point of view of technocrats, professionals, and the intelligentsia.40
In addition, the cabinet and the president sat in a dual capabilities as heads of the government and the ASU. Both the party and the bureaucracy were extensions of one and the same command structure, the president and his aides. 41
11. The ASU: mobilization vs. bureaucratization
The ASU didn’t play a role in mobilization of the masses. Mobilization in Egypt was not perceived in a political perspective in relation to the masses, but it was taken in a rather technical sense and related to organization and administration. It is significant in this respect that the tasks of mobilization were not attached to the ASU or any other political organ but to the statistical agency. 42
Hinnebusch described the ASU as follows: “its leaders were imposed from above, at the top, Free Officers dominated, while at the base the existent local power structure coopted. Given the imposition of leaders from above, … it failed even to serve as an effective instrument of mass mobilization and policy implementation.” 43
The regime failed to develop the means of mobilization. Nasserism, failed to institutionalize itself in an ideological party which could ensure its long-term durability. 44
Heikal disclosed that the recruitment procedure, based on selection, was conducive to the accumulation of influence in the hands of party leaders. “Heikal was directing his criticism against Ali Sabri’s Executive Bureaus, formed during the mobilization period “.45
In short, the ASU became a part of the huge bureaucracy of the regime rather than a means of the mobilization of the masses.
12. The ASU: a source of legitimacy
Nasser aimed to institutionalize his regime. He perceived the ASU as a source of legitimacy. Despite Nasser’s repeated proclamations that the ASU was to be the “source of power”, the organization subordinate status led the entire institutional structure to be dependent for its momentum upon the presidential direction and control.
In fact, Nasser legitimacy did not stem from any independently legal or institutional imperatives. However, the ASU played a role in the legitimization process of the Nasser’s regime.46
In short, the ASU was an attempt to establish a means through which the leadership of the state could have a popular base, and by which a two-way process of communication between the rulers and the ruled could be conducted.47
13. The ASU: Marginalization of the people participation:
(The paradox between the texts and reality)
The ASU was theoretically designed to meet the ideological premise that there must be popular participation and representation on both the local and national levels. The ASU must represent the interests of all popular forces. 48
Participation by these forces in revolutionary activity must be in a single mass organization of the state in order to avoid social conflicts. Social conflict, according to the ideology of the revolution, was the result of political party activity, when parties represented social classes. So the revolution must prevent the emergence of political groups by mobilizing the popular forces in the ASU. 49
In fact, it was noted that the strata of ASU (structures) must be elected in a hierarchical framework. However, Nasser died before holding the elections for the ASU structures in all levels. There were many differences between the provisions of the National charter and the reality.50
It was noted that there would be elected local committees, regional and provincial councils, a general conference of congress, an organizational secretariat, and an elected Higher Executive Committee, Until 1970, when Nasser died, the president of the ASU was president Nasser himself. 51 (See appendices: tables 3&4 )
14. The ASU: Nasser perception of its role: (The difference between theory and practice)
The ASU was not formed on the basis of a pyramidal democratic organizational structure, although that was its proposed framework. In fact its structure reflected the undemocratic latitudinal horizontal organization of the Nasser regime, which was in essence carrying within it the previous form of organization inherent in post-colonial regimes. It was created to carry out Nasser’s socialist policies (Arab Socialism). Despite that Nasser didn’t need popular support (populist). The ASU was necessary to institutionalize the regime.
On 7 December 1962, The ASU was created to be a unitary political party and a means of gathering support of the masses. 52
Nasser aimed at overcoming the traditional public attitude toward government. He adopted the mass participation through a single-party system.
Nasser sought for many things from the ASU. These goals were: 53
1) To combine universal adult membership with a vanguard elite.
2) To contain and “melt” class differences.
3) To mobilize the dispossessed in order to isolate “reactionary” enemies of the revolution.
4) To act as a counter weight to the armed forces.
5) To carry Egypt’s socialist experiment to other Arab countries, especially at the expense of the Ba’ath party.
Despite these goals, there was an ambiguity around the functions of the ASU. In the debate over the shortcomings of the ASU, published in March 1965, a prominent trade union leader observed:
“I think that there are many people who believe in the purposes and goals of the socialist union, but these people have to be given a certain function to perform and certain responsibility”54
During a discussion of halting the profit distribution by an Egyptian company, Nasser remarked: “What is the real role of the socialist union? Tell us how we can know what happened concerning the distribution and halting of profits. I have heard about this question through the minister of the interior, while the socialist union said nothing about it. “55
In a 1966 Rose al-Yusuf article Ali Sabri, then the Secretary General of the ASU, was asked to describe the function of the political apparatus. Sabri began with a vague formulation: “The political apparatus can fulfill a creative role in the operation of building the socialist community, with a membership possessing an enlightened ideological unity. “56
Ali Sabri used his post to create “power centres”. Nasser attacked indirectly this phenomenon.57 Nasser’s developing perception of the ASU as one such dangerous centres of power reflected in the changed official descriptions of the rightful role of the ASU. The first real sign of Nasser’s departure from such a positive view of the ASU came with his handling of the notorious Kamshishe affair.58
15. The ASU: elite party
I argue that in Nasser’s Egypt as a civic society underdeveloped because warped development in a post-colonial mode of production (underdeveloped forces of production), therefore, society is not conducive to mass participation and democratization.
Nasser’s hope that the ASU would become a popular party and inspire a new political consciousness among the masses and promote the cadre of new leadership from a younger generation remained unfulfilled. The ASU remained an ineffective elite organization.59
The ASU failed to be a mass party. A vanguard party was created within the ASU, Nasser was attracted with the Leninist model of a vanguard party to provide the ASU with the needed organizational backbone. In 1964, the Nasser regime announced its intention to form a “political apparatus” or cadre of militants within the ASU. Marxists penetrated the ASU and created the so-called “power centres”. 60
Top-level appointments were made by the mandate system. A presidential decree in 1962 allotted the key positions to trusted and reliable appointees.61
16. The ASU: neither playing a real political role nor fulfilling a clear need
In the light of what I have mentioned above, one can say, from
the people’s political participation point of view that the ASU under Nassser did not play any real political role nor did fulfill any clear need. Moreover, it failed to carry out Nasser’s policies.
First of all, The ASU failed in accomplishing its declared goals. Let us look more closely at some of them. The ASU, while, maintaining the principle of universality of membership, eventually moved towards the formation of a vanguard; moreover, membership was made voluntary. 63 Gamal al Utaifi argues that the voluntary nature of membership was something of a fiction.62
In addition, the ASU failed to contain and melt class differences. Nasser asserted that the ASU represented the national alliance of the working forces. Some people were excluded from the alliance such as those who were affected by the land reform laws and nationalization.64
The rest of the legitimate classes were to cooperate within the new political framework of the party.
Nevertheless, despite the ASU had some kind of ideology and it was possessing greater cohesion and a more focussed action program. These two advantages were counterbalanced by two obstacles, which had an abortive influence on the previous party structures: the first, the lack of competent cadre sincerely dedicated to the cause and the necessary organizational skills to build the ASU. The second, was the military presence in the system.65 The influence of the original Free Officers within the ASU was very clear. (See table no.1and no.2).
Regarding the mission of exporting Egypt’s revolution. The ASU again failed this envisaged task.
17. Conclusion: The ambiguity and the failure of the ASU’s role:
(Failure of the ASU at the official and popular levels)
In retrospective analysis, The ASU failed either to institutionalize the regime or to democratize the political process. Evidently, it didn’t succeed neither in carrying out Nasser’s policies nor continuing his policy after his death. The ASU was an auxiliary instrument of political action, subservient to the will of the leader , and as such, it didn’t acquire an autonomy nor a will of its own.
In addition, The ASU didn’t have the necessary preconditions for self-reproduction. It goes without saying, that the ASU died with Nasser. The reasons for this are: the inability of the ASU to channel the desires of the populace through its so-called democratic channels on one hand, and its latitudinal (de facto non –pyramidal) organizational structure on the other (i.e. power centralized in the hands of the few and one man was on the top).
The ASU was declared in the National Charter to be the nation’s single political organization. This, in itself is enough to put the ASU in none generative and recessive social condition (i.e. it shirked its functions due -among other factors- to the lack of opposition). It did not differ drastically from its predecessor’s in so far as its pyramidal structure and organization, from the village and basic units to those on district, provincial or governorate levels, were concerned.66
Not until June 1967 -at the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli war- the organization of the ASU and the definition of its functions were completed. The projected National Conference to elect a General Council had not materialized. The relationship between the National Assembly and the ASU had not been made clear.67
The formal construction of the ASU was never completed; the National Congress and the Central Committee never came into practice.68 For the first six years of its existence only nominated executive committee of cabinet members headed the ASU; the higher bodies of the ASU were not established until 1970.
The ASU acted as a channel through which the government policies can be disseminated and explained, rather than, the wishes of the people passed up to the government. 69
The ASU was destined ultimately to fail just as the National Union had.70 To begin with, Nasser had no illusions about the actual strength of the ASU in the mid-sixties, despite an alleged membership of some five million and an organizational structure that theoretically reached down into villages. In March 1965 Nasser flatly remarked: “The fact is that we have no actual organization, except on the books”.71 In 1966, Haikal made the same observation: “In the area of political organization the result up till now has been negative”. 72
In the published debate, Marshal Abed el-Hakem Amer attacked the basic principle of a one party system. 73
Moreover, from its inception the ASU was popularly perceived as another administrative extension of Nasser’s power. 74
The ASU came under the control of the leftist elements, which clustered around Ali Sabri, a vice-president and the Secretary General of the ASU. Moreover, the secret vanguard organization within the ASU sought to establish a paralleled if not alternative center of power.75
The ASU had been created to stimulate mass political activity, but without any cohesive strong ideology or genuinely popular appeal activity, beyond an office in every town and a pyramid of executive councils and committees, culminating in Nasser himself, the ASU was almost inevitably condemned to dissolution.76 Nasser, by creating the ASU, had given a false sense of continued political success. . Nasser actually preferred not to take the risk of mass mobilization.77
Nasser complained that the ASU was unable to allocate responsibility in the various committees and at differential levels of its structure; in short, it had not been able to create a political cadre of leadership at any level.78
The attempts at decentralization continued to be hampered by the autocratic structure in the ASU, and its ultimate control from the top.79
Elections from the basic to the higher level units of the ASU had never been completed.80
At the top level there was no very clear distinction between the government and the ASU. The same army officers were members of the both and gradually the ASU began to assume administrative functions. The leader of the both was Nasser.81
Nevertheless the ASU had played the important role of filling the political stage in Egypt and deterring the revival of other parties. It actually died with the death of Nasser.82
Finally, in the final analysis, any appraisal of the ASU’s role during a period of less than eight years, under Nasser, would depend on one’s criteria and expectations.83
Appendices
Table no.1
ASU Supreme Executive (1962-1964)
(It was dominated by the executive branch of the government)
No. |
Background |
Members |
1. |
Officer |
Gamal Abd al-Nasser |
2. |
Officer |
Abd al-Latif al- Baghdadi |
3. |
Officer |
Abd al-Hakim Amer |
4. |
Officer |
Zakaariyya Muhyi al-Din |
5. |
Officer |
Anwar el-Sadat |
6. |
Officer |
Hussein al-Shafi’I |
7. |
Officer |
Aly Sabri |
8. |
Officer |
Hassan Ibrahim |
9. |
Civilian |
Nur al-DinTarraf (Dr.) |
10. |
Civilian |
Ahmad Abduh al-Sharabasi |
11. |
Civilian |
Mahmud Fawzi (Dr.) |
12. |
Officer |
Kamal al- Din Rif’at |
13. |
Civilian |
Abd al-Mun’im al-Qaysuni (Dr.) |
14. |
Civilian |
Aziz Sidgi (Dr.) |
15. |
Officer |
Abbas Rudwan |
16. |
Civilian |
Mustafa Khalil (Dr.) |
17. |
Officer |
Abd al-Qdir Hatim (Dr.) |
18. |
Officer |
Kamal al –Din Hussein |
Note: It is noted that twelve members of the former presidential
council and sex of the former executive council constituted the total members of the ASU Supreme Executive.
Source: Dekmejian, p.148.
Table No.2
The ASU provisional secretariat (December 1964)
(Not elected but disignated by Nasser)
No. |
Background |
Name |
Government post |
ASU post |
1. |
Officer |
Zakariyya Muhyi al-Din |
Vice president |
Member |
2. |
Officer |
Husayn al-Shafi’i al-Din |
Vice president |
ASU secretary general in AlexandriaGover-norate |
3. |
Officer |
Hassan Ibrahim al- Din |
Vice president |
ASU Secretary general in AlexandriaGover-norate |
4. |
Officer |
Anwar el-sadat |
Speaker of the National Assembly |
Member |
5. |
Officer |
Kamal al-Din Rif’at |
Deputy Prime Minister for scientific affairs |
ASU Secretary general in Giza Governorate and for propagation of Socialist ideology |
6. |
Civilian |
Ahamd Abduh al-Sharabasi |
Deputy Prime minister For Waqfs and Al-Azhar affairs |
Secretary of the subsecretarial for farmers sector |
7. |
Civilian |
Nur al-Din Tarraf (Dr. ) |
Deputy Prime Minister for the sector of labour,justice, and youth |
Secretary of the Subsecretariat for Trade union affairs |
8. |
Officer |
Abbas Rudwan |
Deputy prime minister for local government and services |
Secretary of the Subsecrerariat for Upper Egypt |
9. |
Civilian |
Anwar Salamah |
Minister of labour |
Secretary of the Subsecretariat for labour affairs |
10. |
Officer |
Khalid Muhy al-Din |
__________ |
Secretary of the subserctariat for press affairs |
11. |
Civilian |
Sayyid Mar’I |
Vice-president of National Assembly and chairman of Misr Bank |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for National capitalism |
12. |
Officer |
Sha’rawi Goma’a |
____________ |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for organization
|
13. |
Officer |
Fathi al- Dib |
_________ |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for Arab affairs |
14. |
Officer |
Tal’at Khayri |
Minister of youth and sports |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for youth affairs |
15. |
Officer |
Husayn zu al-Fiqar Sabri |
Councellor at the Presidency |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for foreign relations |
16. |
Civilian |
Ali Sayyid Ali |
------------------- |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for labour affiars |
17. |
Civilian |
Husayan Khalaf (Dr.) |
Minister of foreign cultural relations |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for socialist propaganda and culture |
18. |
Officer |
Abd al-Salam Badawi (Dr.) |
Secretary general for Administration and presidency |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for research |
19. |
Civilian |
Abd al –Majid Shadid |
---------------- |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for finincial and adinistrative affairs |
20. |
Civilian |
Abrahim Sa’d al-Din (Dr.) |
--------------- |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for supervision of Higher socialist Institute |
21. |
Officer |
Abed al- Fattah Abu al-Fadl |
---------------- |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for publications and membership affairs |
22. |
Officer |
Ahmad Abdallah Tu’aymah |
---------------- |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for bureaucracy |
23. |
Officer |
Kamal al- Hinnawi |
---------------- |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for Lower Eghpt |
24. |
Civilian |
Ahmad Khalifah |
-------------- |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for professional affairs |
25. |
Civilian |
Abd al- Hamid Ghazi |
---------------- |
Secretary of the subsecretariat for farmers affairs. |
