After sailing smoothly for almost 18 months, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government is feeling powerful undercurrents from many sides. In politics, when bad luck strikes, miseries come in droves, and it appears now that junior coalition partners Pakistan Muslim League-Q and Grad Democratic Alliance (GDA) are also following the path of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) to force the government to come to terms with their demands. First, MQM-P Convener and Federal Information Technology Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui quit the ministry in protest against PTI’s lack of commitment to their demands. Seeing an opportunity to put pressure on the government, PML-Q’s Housing Minister Tariq Bashir Cheema also skipped the federal cabinet meeting, a polite way of indicating the party’s annoyance with coalition affairs. Meanwhile, Sindh-based GDA has given a one-month deadline to the senior government partner to accept their demands. The Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) has issued such warnings a couple of times already. The hard task of talking out difference with allies has been assigned to a committee of ministers, consisting of old, experienced hands, who are likely to handle the situation and buy more time. The whole saga, however, only repeats the history of coalition governments. The whole fuss is about development funds, administrative powers, jobs and so on. The MQM-P was alarmed at the announcement of a package for Karachi by a few federal ministers, which the party sees as a ploy to grab the forthcoming local government elections. MQM-P wants full control over the disbursement of development funds. Though the appropriate way would have been execution of development projects through the provincial government but it appears that PTI, which grabbed a good number of seats in the national elections, wants to mark its presence in the local government elections too. Similarly, PML-Q wants good budgetary allocations and full control of transfers and postings in certain districts and ministries of Punjab. Politics is not a world of blind friendship. Even though the main leadership of PML-Q made it to parliament with the support of PTI, it is now the post-election era and PML-Q is not really bound by the past. GDA is also on the path of PML-Q. GDA won a few seats from Sindh, after a hard contest, thanks to unquestionable support of PTI. In the time to come, junior coalition partners will keep jolting the government. The best bet for PTI is to learn a few good lessons from other parties about keeping junior partners happy. *