Editorial
Pakistan stands at a crossroads once again, and the way forward is neither mysterious nor complicated. The country needs immediate, free, and fair elections. It needs every federal party, without exception, to step onto that electoral field and compete openly. This is not a lofty ideal reserved for textbooks. It is the most basic requirement of a functioning state.
Elections alone, however, will not fix a federation under strain. What must follow is a genuine political process, one that reaches every region of the country, not merely the corridors of Islamabad. Balochistan cannot remain an afterthought. Azad Kashmir cannot be treated as a footnote. Gilgit-Baltistan cannot continue waiting on the margins of national conversation. Each region carries grievances that have accumulated for decades, and each region deserves a seat at the table, not a summons to it.
Consider the pattern. Where elections are delayed, distrust grows. Where political engagement is selective, resentment festers. Where regions are governed through administrative control rather than democratic participation, the federation weakens from within. Balochistan’s unrest, Kashmir’s unresolved status, the sense of alienation felt across smaller provinces, none of this is coincidental. It is the direct consequence of a political process that has too often been postponed, managed, or bypassed altogether.
A strong federation cannot be built on bureaucratic management or security arrangements alone. It must rest on a foundation of democratic legitimacy, one earned through elections that are free, transparent, and inclusive in the truest sense. Without that foundation, no amount of administrative reshuffling will hold the structure together.
Pakistan has the constitutional framework for this. What it needs now is the political will to use it. Elections first. Political engagement across every region second. And from these two steps, a federation that no longer treats its peripheries as problems to be managed, but as partners to be included.
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