EDITORIAL: Political tolerance is not a radical idea, yet the fact that Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had to restate it tells its own story. His reminder that the government must give the opposition space, and that opposition parties must also behave responsibly, comes at a moment when neither side seems particularly interested in lowering the temperature. It is a sensible intervention, one that reflects political maturity. The question is whether anyone else is prepared to match it.
The substance of his remarks was straightforward. He rejected calls for banning political parties, stressed that all forces must play a constructive role, and said the government carries the responsibility of creating political space. This is, at the very least, a recognition that an exclusionary approach never stabilises the system. Pakistan’s history is littered with examples of political engineering producing short-term advantage for one faction and long-term instability for everyone else.
But Bilawal’s sharper point was directed at the opposition. Without naming PTI, he criticised the party’s confrontational style, the fixation with attacking military leadership, and its attempt to frame politics as an all-or-nothing struggle. The argument was clear: opposition is not sabotage. Parties in government and parties outside it share responsibility for keeping the system functional. When any side treats politics as an existential battlefield, the country pays the price.
None of this is novel. Yet it lands differently at a time when the federal government continues to issue vague warnings about governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and the opposition remains committed to portraying all institutions as adversaries. The space for principled disagreement has collapsed into a contest of narratives built on suspicion, grievance and permanent outrage. Bilawal’s attempt to restore a basic distinction between criticism and destabilisation is, therefore, worth noting.
His scepticism about the Election Commission of Pakistan also taps into a broader truth. Neither the government’s allies nor its opponents seem to have confidence in electoral administration. The demand for urgent electoral reform is entirely justified. Unless the rules of the game are credible, every mandate will continue to be questioned, every result will be contested, and every government will begin its term on the defensive. That cycle ultimately corrodes democratic legitimacy, as Pakistanis know all too well.
What Bilawal did not say, but the context makes unavoidable, is that political space is not merely an abstract principle. It requires institutional restraint. When governments allow routine administrative actions to appear coercive, the impression of overreach is inevitable. When opposition parties engage in provocations designed to trigger institutional blowback, the resulting confrontation becomes self-fulfilling. Neither approach advances democratic consolidation. Both guarantee further polarisation.
There is no shortage of examples demonstrating what happens when political disagreements escalate into institutional clashes. The constant background noise of investigations, the weaponisation of regulatory bodies, and the reduction of politics to personalised vendettas have all contributed to a climate where no political actor imagines a future unless their rivals are weakened or eliminated. And, as we have seen repeatedly, a system built on zero-sum thinking will always default to crisis.
The irony is that political actors know this. They know that bans, coercion and manufactured confrontations never produce stability. They know that electoral disputes left unresolved quickly poison the broader atmosphere. They know that institutional mistrust drains legitimacy from decisions that require public confidence. Yet the incentives remain skewed towards short-term advantage rather than long-term system-building.
Bilawal’s comments will not reset the political landscape, but they offer a small window for sobriety. If both government and opposition choose to act on the principle he articulated, the country may finally reclaim some breathing room in its politics. If they ignore it, the familiar cycle will resume, and calls for responsible politics will once again be drowned out by the noise of self-inflicted crises.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025