Background
Sayed Ahmed Marei was born on August 16, 1913 in Cairo, Egypt.
Sayed Ahmed Marei was born on August 16, 1913 in Cairo, Egypt.
Sayed Ahmed Marei was educated at Cairo where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture in 1937. He rounded off his studies later with a fellowship from the American University at Washington.
Politically, his career dates from 1944, the year he became a member of the National Assembly. But the real datum point was his appointment to the Higher Committee of Agrarian Reform after the July 23, 1952, revolution. Nasser made him the main driving force of the land reform programme. Despite his patrician background he attacked the pashas' power base in the country with zest. As head of the Agricultural Cooperative Credit Bank in 1955 he launched the “Supervised Credit System”.
His first step into government was in 1956 as Minister of State for Agriculture and Agrarian Reform. In 1957 he became Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform and published his book “Agrarian Reform in Egypt”. In he was appointed Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly and from 1962 to 1967 he was Managing Director of the Misr Bank in Cairo. In March 1968 he became Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform again, holding the Post until January 1972.
After Sadat became President in October 1970 following the death of Nasser he made Marei one of four Deputy Prime Ministers with overall responsibility for agriculture and irrigation. When Sadat arrested ex-Vice-President Ali Sabri in May 1971 on treason charges the ASU as Sabri’s powerhouse was purged. Aziz Sidki who was given responsibility for reorganising the ASU and its committees, recommended the appointment of Marei as ASU secretary-general on becoming Prime Minister on January 17, 1972.
The partnership from January 1972 until March 1973 was uneasy: Sidki the Harvard-trained technocrat interested in industrial expansion had different priorities from Marei as a man whose main interest in a rural country has always been the land. He helped Sidki during the confrontation with the students by making speech-making tours to calm down the temperature but he took little part in the negotiations on the proposals for a merger between Libya and Egypt. He was replaced at the ASU when Sidki was dismissed as Prime Minister and a new government formed on March 27, 1973. But Sadat kept him at the presidency as an adviser.
Essentially, a bourgeois politician from the country, full of charm but having little in common with the new-generation radicals. Not at ease in ideological clashes, he was particularly unhappy when they led to President Sadat’s purge of left-wing “deviationists” from the ASU.
In 1941 Sayed Ahmed Marei married Soad Marei.