Bilawal Bhutto calls for 'political reset', tells PM to win back allies

PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has asked Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for a “political reset”, saying the government should first restore the confidence of its own allies and then reach out to the opposition instead of opening new fights.

He said it in Karachi on Tuesday, 10 November, at a ceremony marking one million homes completed for families hit by the 2022 floods in Sindh, with Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah and provincial ministers on stage.

What did Bilawal say?

“We need a political reset, and I invite the Prime Minister first to restore the confidence of his allies,” Bilawal said, according to The Nation and Aaj News. After that, he said, the prime minister should restore the confidence of the parties sitting in opposition.

His reason was the economy. He described the country’s situation as an “economic disaster”, with inflation, poverty and unemployment hurting people, and said parties have to work together to give relief rather than fight each other. Aaj News reported that he said the PPP would support the government in dealing with the crisis.

He was not only critical. Bilawal praised Shehbaz Sharif for not making Sindh feel unwanted during the floods, and contrasted that with an unnamed former prime minister who, he said, once remarked that “Sindh is not ours anyway”.

Is this new?

Not entirely, and that is why it matters. In Larkana a few days earlier, Bilawal urged the federal government to keep its doors open for talks with the opposition, and suggested that complaints about elections be taken up through the electoral reforms committee, The Nation reported on 8 November. He also called his meeting with the prime minister in Islamabad before that trip “positive and constructive”.

The PPP is the government’s most important partner. Saying the same thing three times in a week, in public, is a clear message to the PML-N that its allies want to be consulted, not just counted.

The one million homes

The event itself was about Sindh’s flood housing project, which plans 2.1 million homes for families who lost theirs in 2022. The provincial government says one million are now complete, which a Sindh government briefing said beats the previous record of about 700,000 homes built by Nepal’s government. Bilawal said a further two million homes would be built once this project ends, and said that as foreign minister he arranged financing for flood rebuilding in all four provinces.

What next

The reports carry no response yet from the prime minister’s office or from opposition parties. The PML-N’s reply, and whether any formal talks with the opposition follow, is the thing to watch this week.