It was this more limited, and of course entirely constitutional aim which explained the failure of the attempted coup in 1961 and the readiness with which the new northern political organizations sought to ally with those who opposed the S.Y.L. in the south. Hitherto, indeed, the integrity of the Republic had been much less seriously in danger than foreign observers had sometimes supposed.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 447