Pakistan Ex Servicemen Society (PESS) was established about two decades ago as a non-political, non-religious, non-ethnic and non-profitable organisation purely to look after the welfare of the ex-servicemen. The late Major General Qamar Ali Mirza headed it. In the earlier days, it had a small office where Secretary General, Col Akbar Ali, and Maj. Nazar used to write applications for widows of ex-servicemen, mostly pertaining to pension problems and some odd civil litigations. After General Qamar Ali Mirza's demise, in walked General Faiz Ali Chishti and the members could smell his political designs from day one. He even made some of the PESS office bearers contest in the general elections of 2002 with out any success. Little do the PESS office bearers realise that they have no constituency anywhere in the country. The so called '2.5 million ex servicemen' are spread all over Pakistan and habit in small numbers wherever they do with little or no impact over the obtaining political atmosphere in their respective areas. Of late, some of the opportunists are using PESS as an anti Musharraf tool and are presently 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 has some axe to grind. As an ex army man it does not behove me to wash our own dirty linen in public and recount what all of them have been accused of doing in the past. They have had huge bank scandals and had to tender open apologies to the Supreme Court to save their skin. There walked away with millions in public transport default. -COL (Retd) RIAZ JAFRI, Rawalpindi, via e-mail, June 2.