From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (January 15)
Pakistan's first coup was led by a civilian. When the bureaucrat-turned-Governor General Ghulam Mohammad arbitrarily dismissed Prime Minister Khwaja Nazimuddin on 17 April 1953 he was a little apprehensive about intervention by Queen Elizabeth II of Britain. He had reasons to be worried, because Pakistan was still a Dominion State, and the Queen was legal monarch of the Dominion. Pakistan became fully independent when it adopted a democratic Constitution on 2 March 1956, but it never got the chance to become a democracy because General Ayub Khan stepped in through a military coup before an election could be held. What is curious is that 56 years later its civilian rulers still look abroad for help in a crisis.
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