Ex-Servicemen Club Exposed
By Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd.)
Westridge, Rawalpindi
Pakistan Ex Servicemen Society was established about two decades ago as a non political, non religious, non-ethnic and non-profitable organization purely to look after the welfare of the ex-servicemen.
It was headed by the late Major General Qamar Ali Mirza and had a small office with a clerk where late Col. Akhtar Ali – the Secretary General and Maj. Nazar used to write applications for the widows and the ex-servicemen mostly pertaining to pension problems and some odd civil litigation matter pending in some court and forwarded them to concerned civil and military departments.
After General Qamar Ali Mirza’s demise, in walked General Faiz Ali Chishti and the members could smell through his political designs from day one. He even made some of the PESS office bearers contest in the General Elections 2002 but with no success whatsoever.
Little do the PESS so called office bearers realize that they have no constituency and the so called 2.5 million ex servicemen are spread all over Pakistan in small numbers with little or no impact whatsoever over the obtaining political atmosphere in their respective areas.
Surprisingly, of late some of the opportunists are using PESS as an anti-Musharraf tool and supported by GEO – who lets go of no such opportunity to malign the President – are issuing one ultimatum after the other.
By the way who are these Generals and Brigadiers? Are they even members of the PESS? Not to my knowledge at least. On the contrary most of them have some axe to grind. As an ex-army man it does not behove me to wash our own dirty linen in the public and recount what all they had been accused of in the past. If there were huge bank scandals on the one hand, on the other there were open apologies were tendered to the Supreme Court to save one’s skin, and there were others who walked away with millions in public transport default.
Lesser one talks of a very efficient time-server general who quotes ayah after ayah and talks of having saved billions to the exchequer used to have the official fax machine in his bedroom not to miss the smallest deal in each of which he used to have his personal interest. Some had the best of East Pakistan and then of the Highest Development Authorities. And now they have the cheek to ride with the rising sun and try to tell the president what to do and what not to do and that too in the name of PESS.
A piddling of a non entity – I suppose a general - was heard saying that 25 lac ex-servicemen are with them. Twenty-five lacs, my foot! At least I am not. So better correct your figures, general, one less than your so-called twenty five lacs.
Gentlemen, you have no right to alter the charter of the PESS which is purely the welfare of the ex-servicemen. Do not make it a political one just to serve your nefarious designs. If you have any political designs use some other platform and that will show you the true worth of yours – confiscating of even your bails in any coming elections.
(Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd) is based in Rawalpindi. His commentary is appears frequently in several national Pakistani dailies. He can be reached at jafri@rifiela.com)
