President of the Arab Union
The President of the Arab Union (Arabic: رئيس الاتِّحاد raʾīs al-ittiḥād; lit. "President of the Union") is the head of state of the Arab Union and its 20 republics. According to the constitution, the President of the Arab Union serves ex officio as commander-in-chief of the Union Defence Forces (UDF), the modern military and defence apparatus of the Union.
The head of government at the all-union (federal) level is the Prime Minister, while each of the 20 republics (the federated states constituting the Arab Union) has its own respective head of government officially called the Governor, who oversees the respective republic's executive administration (known formally as a governorate), functioning as a tier between the baladiyāt (local councils) and the federal/central government.
The constitution calls for the direct, popular election of the President of the Union to a seven-year term; there is no constitutional limit to the number of terms a given president may serve, consecutively or otherwise. The President is responsible for appointing the Prime Minister on advice of the Arab Congress. By tradition, the President of the Arab Union is styled both His Excellency (سعادته saʿādat-hu) and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques (خادم الحرمين الشريفين khādim al-ḥarimayn ash-sharīfayn), as Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam, are located in the Arab Union; the latter title was previously held by Arab, later Ottoman, and briefly again Arab monarchs within whose sovereign territory Mecca and Medina were located. Since the end of the 1986–1989 Arab Revolutionary War, the President of the Arab Union has held the latter title after the Arab Union's capture of Mecca and Medina in the course of the war.
The official residence and workplace of the President of the Arab Union is Shams Palace in Artillery Heights, Nasseria. Roman Kindi became the fourth President of the Arab Union on 8 November 2024 after the resignation of his predecessor, Bashar al-Assad, the previous day. National elections are scheduled for May 2025.
List[edit | edit source]
# | President | In office | Political party | Prime minister(s) | Portrait |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Gamal Abdel Nasser | 1958–1970 | Arab Socialist Union | Ali Sabri Zakaria Mohieddin Mohamed Sedki Sulayman |
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2 | Hafez al-Assad | 1970–2000 | Ba'ath Party | Abdul Rahman Khleifawi Mahmoud al-Ayyubi Abdul Rahman Khleifawi Muhammad Ali al-Halabi Abdul Rauf al-Kasm Mahmoud Zuabi Muhammad Mustafa Mero |
|
3 | Bashar al-Assad | 2000–2024 | Ba'ath Party | Muhammad Mustafa Mero Muhammad Naji al-Otari Adel Safar Riyad Farid Hijab Omar Ibrahim Ghalawanji Wael Nader al-Halqi Yahya Abdalati Jibril Jeha |
|
4 | Roman Kindi | 2024– | Ba'ath Party | Jibril Jeha |