HERE’S the thing about fault lines: they do not disappear overnight. Not even the political ones.

Which brings us to Punjab. Some members of the Jehangir Khan Tareen group met Chief Minister Usman Buzdar on Friday and emerged looking satisfied. They faced the cameras, said the right things, and appeared to calm the situation down. They had formed a pressure group, gone public, criticised the Punjab government, issued thinly veiled threats about breaking ranks during the budget vote, and were finally rewarded with a meeting with the province’s chief executive. So matter settled, grievances addressed, and the storm in a teacup dissipated?

Not really.

To understand the dynamics at play, one may need a deep dive into the fault lines within the ruling party and how they continue to generate conflict where none is needed. The JKT affair has illuminated many of these fault lines and in the process tested the PTI’s ability to find the quasi-impossible balance between principles and political expediency. The real problem afflicting the PTI is not that it is struggling with this balance — all parties do — but the fact that this imbalance has been exposed to the world when it should have been hidden away somewhere deep inside the PTI’s wounded and conflicted soul.

JKT’s slide down the PTI hierarchy was bound to happen if left on its own.

The JKT group is a living embodiment of this internal imbalance. To see it only as a group of people getting together in order to derive some material benefits is to miss its organic materialisation as a by-product of mismanagement by the PTI both at the federal and provincial levels. The contradictions speak for themselves: PTI leaders in Islamabad and Lahore, armed to the teeth with the awesome powers of two governments, could not keep 40 of their parliamentarians with them, while JKT with no office, no powers, no official favours and no real political future after his disqualification by the Supreme Court, rallied them around himself to an extent that they were prepared to break ranks with the leadership that provides them political sustenance.

The fault lines make this mismanagement even more complex. Essentially, the mismanagement has happened at two separate levels, and those with deep political sense in the party acknowledge this. This first deals with how the party leadership has dealt with JKT as a person; the second pertains to how it has mishandled its electables in Punjab. It is when these two streams conjoined at one point — a confluence of two rivers — that the group emerged in the form of dissidents out to confront their own party.

JKT’s slide down the PTI hierarchy was bound to happen if left on its own. Here was the man who ran the party, bankrolled the party, and stitched up the numbers for the party when it needed to cross the winning line. He sculpted the grand strategy and crafted the complex operations at a time when the party was running up blind alleys. When you’re that powerful, you make enemies. His disqualification therefore led to muted celebration within his own party ranks. The enemies had sensed his depleting strength. Once in power, Prime Minister Imran Khan kept him close but shorn of official weight, JKT found himself gradually being sidelined because of restricted access and other blockages that are available to those who wield sanctioned power.

Read: Tareen ‘exploring political options’ to stay relevant

This was the time that JKT needed to be managed well. Power is transient but perhaps the newbies in the PTI decided to ignore this reality. The party leadership grew oblivious to the gradual weaponisation of fault lines and the multiple cleavages they spawned between key people around the prime minister. JKT was left to fend for himself. Even then, he wielded enough clout within the cabinet and the party to stay relevant as a force. That’s when more pressure was exerted so that he could be cut to size. There was really no need for this for a party that already had too much on its plate. The unnecessary fault line should have been recognised by the top leadership, and stitched up. It was not. Once the slide started, there was little that could be salvaged. JKT was pushed to the wall and thrown to the floor.

But why did the 40-odd parliamentarians flock to him? The second phase of mismanagement was in a way a natural extension of the first one. JKT was supposed to have become the chief minister of Punjab. In opposition he was the chief political manager and in power he was expected to carry on this role as the chief minister. This in fact is the key role of the chief minister: manage the party and parliamentarians, keep them together through a combination of fear and favour, and ensure their constituencies are well nourished by the largesse that only a chief minister can bestow. When JKT got disqualified, the party leadership should have factored in this crucial issue of political management while appointing the chief executive of the province. The fact that it did not, suggests that either it did not give importance to political management, or it figured this could be done from Islamabad. The thinking was flawed.

For the last two years, there has been no person from within the PTI hierarchy who is managing Punjab’s politics. Not one. This has led to a widespread feeling within the electables in Punjab that they have to struggle — often beg — for access in order to get their work done. Most realise the sinking fortunes of their party — and therefore the party ticket — in Punjab. The 40 who decided to cross the Rubicon are those that aired their grievances. Many more are silent and seething. It is not about funds or transfers and postings only. The fault line is deeper.

The JKT affair is not over because the wounds that caused the original rupture are still bleeding. A political aspirin and chief ministerial bandage cannot cure the infection deep inside the flesh. This may require surgery. But where’s the surgeon?

Perhaps more importantly, who is the surgeon?

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Islamabad.

Twitter: @fahdhusain

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2021