Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has called for a "political reset" in Pakistan, urging Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to rebuild trust with coalition allies and the opposition instead of opening new fronts of confrontation. Speaking at a ceremony in Karachi on Tuesday, he said the country's politics "will definitely have to be reset" to deal with an economic crisis he described as an "economic catastrophe".

"But via this reset, political parties will have to work together instead of fighting," Bilawal said, adding: "We need a political reset." He invited the prime minister to first "restore the trust of his allies", and then that of the opposition parties, "instead of picking new fights with them".

What Bilawal is asking for

Bilawal argued that the public no longer wanted to hear calls for confrontation, and that no single party could steer the country through the crisis alone. He said the support of all Pakistanis, including those in the opposition, was needed, warning: "Unless we face this crisis together, we will not be able to save our people from this difficulty."

He also pushed back against the idea that a reset should mean running the country according to the wishes of the rich or of business groups in Islamabad and Lahore. The country, he said, should be run by the people, "instead of traders and businessmen".

Why the call comes now

The appeal follows weeks of sharp exchanges between federal ministers and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who has moved closer to the opposition alliance. The JUI-F leader joined the opposition in criticising the Centre's imposition of governor's rule and emergency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the PTI government was suspended last month.

The Centre has defended the move by citing what it calls the KP government's "deliberate disengagement" from the counterterrorism fight, and a PPP governor now heads the provincial administration. Bilawal separately urged the government to stop confronting the PTI and Fazlur Rehman, and to engage them through dialogue.

Bilawal also linked the political appeal to the economy, pointing to the oil and energy crisis driven by the war between the United States, Israel and Iran. He described the crisis as one of the worst in the world's history, arguing that it could only be faced collectively.

The housing milestone behind the speech

The remarks came at an event marking the completion of one million houses for flood-affected families under the Sindh Flood Resilience Project, which Bilawal called the largest house-building programme in the world. "The Sindh government has built one million houses, and when this project is completed, we would have built two million houses," he said.

The project aims to rebuild around 2.1 million rural homes damaged by the devastating floods of 2022, at a total cost of almost $2 billion, and covers 40 per cent of rural households in Sindh. The European Investment Bank's development arm, EIB Global, is providing a €100 million loan, and the provincial government has sought a further $350 million from the World Bank for the 2026-27 fiscal year.

Bilawal thanked the prime minister for the Centre's support for flood rehabilitation, while noting, without naming PTI founder Imran Khan, that a predecessor of Mr Sharif "did not give us a single penny" to help Sindh's flood-hit people. "He even said 'Sindh is not ours', but Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has at least not made us feel this," he said.

The new-provinces backdrop

The "reset" call also landed in the middle of a separate debate over creating new provinces. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi first argued in July that the system needed a reset through new administrative units, and Defence Minister Khawaja Asif backed the idea of twelve new provinces earlier this month. The Sindh Assembly passed a resolution in September rejecting any division of the province.

Bilawal's position is that the reset Pakistan needs is political, not territorial: parties working together rather than fighting one another, with relief for the public as the shared goal. Whether the government and the opposition accept that invitation will be the test of his speech.