On the one hand the President of this Ex-Servicemen Society is condemning military coups, and demanding the great President Musharraf apologise to the nation. Yet, on the other hand this same person is defending his support of General Zia-ul-Haq, and refusing to say sorry for his part in the military coup of 1977. 
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=95116
Thursday, February 07, 2008
By Umar Cheema
ISLAMABAD: Lt-Gen (retd) Faiz Ali Chishti, the president of the Ex-Servicemen Society, who had collaborated with Gen Ziaul Haq, on Wednesday justified his 1977 martial law, and said he had no regrets on his past conduct and ‘whatever we did was right’.
Instead of offering an apology to the nation, he said Zia’s martial law could be called ‘consequential’ to the countrywide unrest while all the other martial laws, imposed by dictators from Ayub Khan to Musharraf, were ‘intentional’.
Chishti was Commander 10 Corps when the martial law was imposed and later served as Zia’s minister until his retirement in 1980. He had then said that Army felt encouraged to impose the martial law due to the indifference of the public to whom he had termed ‘beghairat (disgraceful)’. Talking to The News, Chishti, however, said Musharraf and others had imposed martial laws without any solid reason.
When asked for an apology for the role as collaborator of martial law, Chishti said he had proposed to the PPP government in 1988 to call all the aides of Zia in the National Assembly, including him, and take account of the reasons behind the martial law and, subsequently, a decision to avert such threats in future. The Benazir government to whom he had conveyed the message through a PPP leader, Ghayas-ud-Din Janbaz, did not do it, he said.
Asked if he did not repent the hanging of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, he said he was executed on judicial order and not by them. He denied that judiciary was forced to do this by the military junta. But, at the same time, responding to a question, he said he did not have faith in judiciary because it was subservient to the executive.
When asked whether he used the word ‘beghairat (disgraceful)’ for the public, Chishti said he did not remember.
According to a report, Chishti during the Zia regime had asked an information officer working with him, the reason as to why the public did not stand and resist the imposition of martial law. The information officer, as a typical bureaucrat, could not come up with an answer fearing the ire of his boss. Chishti, however, replied to his own question when had addressed the officer and said: “They (public) are ‘beghairat’. Had they not been so, we (Army) could not have gathered the courage to impose the martial law.”
When Chishti was reminded of his words, he did not deny them, but said he could not recall. But he told The News that people never feel afraid of war but they fear only one man, the Army chief.
He said there was a need to institute a commission to ascertain the reasons of successive martial laws and suggest remedial measures to avoid it in future. He, however, did not say he had committed mistakes in the past.