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Ishaq Khan dead

Nirupama Subramanian

ISLAMABAD: Ghulam Ishaq Khan, the Pakistani President who dismissed two democratic governments, died on Friday in Peshawar aged 91. He had been unwell for the last three months.

Mr. Khan was an important eyewitness to and participant in some of the most important and dramatic moments of Pakistan's history.

A civil servant in undivided India, he was first elected to the Pakistan upper House or Senate in 1985. He was Chairman of the Senate when General Zia-ul-Haq was President. When Gen. Zia was killed in a plane crash in 1988, Mr. Khan became President and late that year, held democratic elections that brought Benazir Bhutto to power.

But using the powers he had under the Constitution's Eighth Amendment, he dismissed her Government in 1990.

Fresh elections brought Nawaz Sharif to power, but Mr. Khan used his powers once again to dismiss him too.

The tensions that the second dismissal set off — the Supreme Court overruled it — eventually led to his resignation in 1993.

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