EGYPT: Sword Unsheathed

Egypt’s reluctant strongman, Major General Mohammed Naguib, stopped being reluctant. He had tried to stay in the background and run things through Prime Minister Aly Maher. This week Naguib threw out Aly, took over as Premier and, in fact, dictator.

From his GHQ at Abbasiya Barracks early one morning this week, flying squads roared into Cairo, rounded up 62 sleepy-eyed politicians and former palace officials, jailed the lot in Cairo’s army school. Among those arrested: nine ex-Cabinet ministers and two ex-Premiers (Ibrahim Abdul Hadi, 52, president of the rightwing Saadist Party, and Ahmed Naguib el Hilary, 60, Independent). The prize catch: Fuad Serag el Din, the hippopotamine secretary general of the graft-ridden Wafd Party. At 7:15 a.m., Cairo Radio broadcast a communique from General Naguib: “Citizens! The army movement was not directed solely against the ex-King [Farouk]. It was, still is, and will continue to be a sword unsheathed against corruption in every shape or form.” The politicians had been arrested, the communique added, because their parties had disregarded the Commander in Chief’s order to purge themselves of corruption or be purged.

Naguib drove in his big green staff car to the official palace of Prime Minister Aly Maher, asked him to quit. Aly did. “Authority,” he said, “should be concentrated in the hands of the armed forces.” By nightfall Naguib, still wearing his uniform, was Prime Minister and Minister of War & Marine.

Naguib himself explained what lay behind the army’s latest coup. “Speed,” he said, “was one of the objectives of our movement.” The army was exasperated by Aly Maher’s slowcoach approach to the key issue of the whole cleanup movement: land reform. Instead of getting started on the breakup of large estates, Maher’s Cabinet had hemmed & hawed, appointed one committee after another to “study” the question. Prices were still skyhigh, favoritism was still common in government promotion lists, and Wafdist politicians plotted to overthrow the new regime.

Naguib knows that his revolution may collapse overnight unless it produces speedy and tangible benefits for Egypt’s people. In his first statement as Premier, he promised: “One of the first plans we shall carry out is limitation of land possession and [reduction of] prices.” To help him carry out his promise, he appointed a Deputy Premier—Soliman Hafez, an able, progressive lawyer—and an all-civilian Cabinet of 15 experts, only three of them politicians.