New Delhi: A Pakistani chief minister has given people the perfect recipe to run kangaroo courts in the name of instant justice. His suggestion—split their head wide open with a brick if they demand a bribe. Now Pakistanis are asking if the brick will be available at government offices or if one has to go prepared.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur, while addressing a political rally, asked people to indulge in what some Pakistanis described as “vigilante justice”. Others call him a “solution giver”.
During the rally in Syed Aliyan village in Dera Ismail Khan, Gandapur encouraged people to hit officers with a brick for demanding bribery and then attribute the act to him. “Crack open the head of the officer or official of any department who asks for a bribe.”
He said that those who seek bribery will eventually go to hell and emphasised that givers and takers of bribes have been condemned as per Islam, asking people to not complain to him and “punish” them on the spot.
He brazenly asked the public to “tell his children that you saved his father from going to hell”.
Gandapur, a member of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), was elected as the 19th chief minister of Pakhtunkhwa province earlier this month. He has been highlighting the need to end corruption and ensure a transparent system. His idea of so-called justice has drawn criticism across the internet, with many people raising concerns about the impact of a political leader endorsing violence.
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Reacting to his remarks, Waqas Habib Rana, a Pakistani journalist during a conversation on his YouTube channel, sarcastically asked his guest, “If someone asks you for a bribe, will the brick be available in the government office or do you have to go outside and look for it?” To this, the guest, Ghazan Iftikhar responded, “It’s a government office, walls will be damaged. You will easily find a brick.”
Opposing Gandapur’s suggestion, Iftikhar added that the suggestion is dangerous because it gives people the license to harm or even kill those asking for bribes.
“What kind of a country will you then live in?” he asked.
Shazia Nizamani, lawyer and columnist, also spoke out against Gandapur’s remarks. “…He is encouraging ppl to resort to violence, take law into hands, create chaos. This is #PTI’s political ideology from top to bottom,” she wrote on X.
In a reply to Nizamani’s post, an X user wrote: “Don’t be surprised, whatever he said is their agenda to prevail the Gundda culture…”
Others asked why people had to vote for him if they had to punish corrupt officials on their own.
This is not the first time Gandapur has found himself in the middle of a controversy. In 2021, he targeted Punjab Chief Minister, Maryam Nawaz, and commented on her appearance. Many criticised him for making sexist remarks.
During a political rally, he called her a “daku rani [queen of thieves]” and claimed she had plastic surgery done worth Pakistani Rs 80 million. “If we come to slap then you will get slapped so much that your [real] face will be uncovered from the Rs 80 million [cosmetic] surgery you have done from our [tax] money,” he had said.
Even Pakistan’s recently elected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had called Gandapur’s words “not only violent but also deeply misogynistic”.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)