Diaa al-Din Dawoud

Diaa al-Din Dawoud
Portrait of Dawoud, 1968
Social Affairs Minister
In office 1968–1971
Prime Minister	Gamal Abdel Nasser (1968-1970) Mahmoud Fawzi (1970-1971)
Secretary-General of Arab Democratic Nasserist Party
In office 19 June 1967 – 28 September 1970
Preceded by	Post Established
Succeeded by	Ahmed Hassan
Personal details
Born	(1926-03-26)26 March 1926 al-Roda, Damietta Governorate, Kingdom of Egypt
Died	6 April 2011(2011-04-06) (aged 85) Cairo, Egypt
Nationality	Egyptian
Political party	Arab Socialist Union (1964-1971) Arab Democratic Nasserist Party (1987-death)

Diaa al-Din Dawoud (name also spelled Diya el-Din Dawud or Diaaeddin Dawoud; 26 March 1926 – 6 April 2011) was an Egyptian politician and activist. He is the founder of the Arab Democratic Nasserist Party, serving as its secretary-general between 1992 and November 2010.

Dawoud was born and raised in the rural Nile Delta village of al-Roda in the Damietta region. At the time, many of al-Roda's inhabitants were impoverished, although Dawoud's family lived in relatively better conditions, owning about 100 feddans of land. Most of the village's lands were owned by Mohammed Abdel Halim Halim, a Turkey-based relative of then-King Farouk. Dawoud grew up resenting what he saw as the exploitation of al-Roda's inhabitants by the royal aristocracy and the poor conditions of his village.

In an interview with Al Ahram Weekly, Dawoud claimed he was the only person from al-Roda who attended university in the 1940s. He spent his first year, 1946, studying at the Alexandria University's Faculty of Law, before being admitted to King Fuad University in Cairo in 1947. He graduated with a law degree in 1950. He briefly joined the Muslim Brotherhood during his time at King Fuad University, but left shortly after due to his disillusionment with what he called "absolutist religious thinking." During his university years, Dawoud took an interest in socialism and political activism, joining the National Party headed by Abd al-Rahman al-Rafai in 1946. That year, students from Alexandria University's law school staged a protest against the British military presence in Alexandria prompting the Egyptian security forces to quell the demonstration, killing two of Dawoud's classmates. The British military barracks was then attacked by students the following day, resulting in the closure the university until October.

Dawoud began his law practice working for a firm in Faraskur, a city near his hometown. He continued his law practice in the Damietta area after the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, when the Free Officers Movement overthrew the monarchy of King Farouk. Dawoud welcomed the revolution and left the National Party, viewing the party system itself as "politically bankrupt and lack[ing] solutions to help the country escape the continued political and socio-economic crisis." When the Free Officers, who governed through the Revolutionary Command Council, established a single-party system in 1953 with the Liberation Rally being the only legal political movement of the state, Dawoud joined it. The National Union replaced the Liberation Rally in 1956.