Wafd Up

Egypt's palace dictatorship died last fortnight with King Fuad I (TIME, May 11). Last week Egyptian politicians worked fast to take over the Government. As 16-year-old King Farouk I arrived from England to move into his new job, Egypt's overwhelmingly popular Wafd Party swept snap elections, as speechless as they were brief, for the Chamber of Deputies and Senate. Reason for haste was that King Farouk is two years short of his dynastic majority. The Constitution of 1923 provided that the envelope containing King Fuad's nominations for the Council of Regents had to be opened before a full Parliament within ten days of his death.

Last week, day before the Senate elections, King Farouk sailed into Alexandria harbor on the British liner Viceroy of India. In Cairo the young King knelt before the tomb of his father in the Mosque of Er-Rifai, met Queen Mother Nazli and his four sisters at Abdin Palace. His work was ended when he recognized as his heir his first cousin, 61-year-old Prince Mohammed Ali, son of his father's eldest brother and his father's nominee for president of the Council of Regents to replace a nominee who had died.

Promptly on the tenth day after Fuad's death, Egypt's first Parliament since November 1934 met on the Moslem Sunday (Friday) for the first time in history. After brief eulogies to the King, Premier Aly Maher Pasha opened the envelope. Everybody knew the three names it contained: Fuad's son-in-law Mahmond Fakry Pasha; onetime Premier Tewfik Nessim Pasha; and the late Premier Adly Yeghen Pasha, all good safe Fuad stooges.

The Wafd Parliament had the right to reject these names and it unanimously did so. It thereupon chose Prince Mohammed Ali for president of the Regency Council, as Fuad had planned, and two other men who would probably have been acceptable to the late King. They were his brother-in-law, Cherif Sabry Pasha, 41, athletic Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, and onetime Foreign Minister and Minister to Great Britain General Aziz Izzet Pasha. Not by accident was the Council loaded with foreign affairs experts, for Egypt's most important pending business is the negotiation of a new treaty with Britain.

Next order of business was the reading of the new King's greetings, in which he asked that his allowance be cut from $750,000 to $500,000 a year, the difference to be paid in salaries to the Council of Regents.

Last week Egypt passed into the Wafd's power when Premier Aly Maher Pasha presented Prince Mohammed Ali with the resignations of his no-party Cabinet and the Premiership went to the Wafd leader, burly, big-voiced Mustafa El Nahas Pasha.

El Nahas Pasha is today the Wafd. He inherited it in 1927 from the late great Zaghlul Pasha who founded the party and picked El Nahas Pasha for his lieutenant. In Egypt, as elsewhere, lawyers supply most of the popular leaders and El Nahas Pasha is one of the ablest, most belligerent of Egypt's lawyers. A forceful speaker, he fired the fuse to last year's anti-British rioting, said: "We want to be Britain's ally, not her vassal."

Last week, forming an all-Wafd Cabinet, Premier El Nahas Pasha announced: ''Our external program is to promote friendly relations with foreign powers, foremost of which is the U. S. . . . The internal program is concerned with . . . the promotion of the interests of the peasants and laborers."

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