Bilawal calls for 'political reset' and urges PM to rebuild trust with allies and opposition

Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has called for a "political reset" in which all political parties work together for the sake of the country, urging Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to rebuild trust with the government's allies and the opposition instead of engaging in further confrontation.

Bilawal was addressing an event in Karachi on Tuesday to mark the completion of one million houses for flood-affected families under the Sindh Flood Resilience Project, a programme he described as the largest house-building effort of its kind in the world. The Sindh government aims to build 2.1 million homes in total for victims of the devastating 2022 floods, and the first million have now been completed in about three years.

Referring to the ongoing oil and energy crisis caused by the war involving the United States and Iran, Bilawal said Pakistan and the world were facing an "economic catastrophe" and stressed that "Pakistan's politics will definitely have to be reset" to combat it. "But via this reset, political parties will have to work together instead of fighting," he added.

He invited the prime minister to first "restore the trust of his allies", then of the opposition parties, "instead of picking new fights with them". He argued that the public did not want to witness further fighting between politicians, and that the people expected governments to improve their lives rather than engage in political confrontation.

Bilawal went further, saying there was no time to manipulate the system at the behest of the business community in Islamabad or Lahore, and that if the system was to be reset, the country should be run on the wishes of poor people, with the economy growing as a result. "We need a political reset," he reiterated, adding that opponents should learn from the PPP how to serve the people instead of engaging in baseless criticism.

The PPP chairman also took an oblique swipe at Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi and the PML-N, noting that Naqvi had claimed in July that the country's systems needed a "reset" through the creation of new provinces, a proposal the Sindh Assembly, where the PPP holds a majority, later opposed. Bilawal's version of a reset, by contrast, is about unity and governance focused on people's needs rather than the interests of powerful groups.

The call comes at a tense moment in national politics. The federal government has been at odds not only with the opposition, including Imran Khan's PTI, whose government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was suspended after the imposition of emergency and governor's rule there last month, but also with JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rahman, who has moved closer to the opposition after what he sees as reckless remarks against him by cabinet ministers.

Bilawal's position matters because his party is the most important ally of the Shehbaz Sharif administration, propping up the government as a major stakeholder without joining the federal cabinet. The PPP has agreed to cooperate with the prime minister and his team through mutual consultation, and Bilawal thanked the prime minister for his cooperation on the housing programme, while also thanking the World Bank for supporting the initiative and placing its trust in the Sindh government.

A Dawn editorial published on Sunday made a similar point, arguing that the prime minister and the PML-N should listen to Bilawal because he speaks as the government's most important ally, and warning that if the government keeps fighting the PTI and Maulana Fazlur Rahman alongside the battle against terrorists, India and Afghanistan, it "might end up remaining engaged in that [political fighting] only" instead of tackling the real problems: a stagnating economy, rising terrorism and the war in the Gulf.

Whether the prime minister takes up the invitation is now the question. Bilawal has made the same argument repeatedly in recent weeks, in Larkana and elsewhere, and each time the message has been the same: set aside confrontation, bring the allies and the opposition into confidence, and let the government get on with the economy. For now, it remains an invitation, not an ultimatum, but it is one the government will find hard to ignore.