Career
A cigar perpetually hanging from his lips, the "Pasha", as Fouad Serageldin liked to be called, continued to refer to Egypt"s 1952 Revolution as the "coup d"état" which aborted a programme of reform he had helped to mastermind as Wafd secretary-general. When President Hosni Mubarak allowed the Wafd to emerge from a prolonged period of dormancy in 1984, Serageldin proved a skilful political operator given the limits imposed on a divided and decimated opposition, and made the First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Wafd newspaper an instant success through its Asfoura (Sparrow) column exposés of corruption and mismanagement. A minister by his early thirties, he held four portfolios in the 1940s, serving in the Wafd-led Government of 1950-1952 as Interior and Finance Minister.
His political career was abruptly suspended as the Free Officers" coup neared.
Put on trial, he was sentenced to 15 years" imprisonment but released two months later. Several periods of detention followed under Colonel Nasser.
He would later take cr for ordering police in Ismailia armed with rifles to engage in a futile battle against British troops using light artillery, but this merely precipitated the burning of Cairo a day later on 26 January 1952, and the Government"s immediate dismissal. However, the New Wafd Party survived as a significant opposition party, contributing to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.