The military has done the right thing by clearing the air about any perceived role it might have in the politics of the country, which it doesn’t, so political parties on both sides of the government-opposition divide are now advised to refrain from dragging it into their high-stakes game of thrones. For the grand opposition alliance, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), that would mean revising their entire strategy behind their plan to topple the government, which explains why most of their spokespersons have gone silent on the matter for the moment. One is inclined to take that as a sign that they might indeed be in the process of redefining their priorities, but since this is fast becoming more or less a zero-sum game, one can only really know anything for sure when one sees it. The situation clearly needs urgent de-escalation and the ruling party, being the party in government, bears the bigger responsibility of working towards a thaw as usual. As such its same-page narrative, which is meant to imply perfect alignment of interests between the government and military and hence no friction at all, also needs some revision. Nothing is better for a country than all premier institutions of the state working in perfect harmony with the government, of course, but to use the same-page argument as a tool to blunt the opposition’s advances is not suitable in the current environment and does the cause of diffusing the situation no good at all. One more point that needs to be made very seriously is that the growing tendency of associating the designs and positions of political opponents with enemies of the country is simply unacceptable and must stop immediately. The government is in this habit more than the opposition, so this could be a good starting point for a much-needed change in approach. If only the country’s most senior and experienced politicians could give ordinary people the kind of importance that they claim to in their speeches and tweets there would be a lot less hostility and volatility in the public sphere. Nobody should need to be reminded this late in the game that a slugfest between rulers and their opponents only paralyses the state and hurts the interests of the common people. Whichever way the politicians choose to take their fight from here, they should at least have the grace to leave the military out of it.*