AS the scorching midday sun gave way to thunderstorms on Tuesday, a perfect storm seemed to be brewing in the halls of power as well.

The tensions simmering between the government and the opposition overshadowed other events as both sides moved frantically to consolidate their position over the controversy surrounding the Panamagate leaks.

The government seemed to strike a fine balance between aggression and magnanimity: willing to sit with the opposition, but not without laying certain ground rules.

For their part, the opposition also kept up the pressure, walking out of both houses of parliament despite assurances from the government that the prime minister would personally come to the house to explain his position later in the week.

In the National Assembly, both Syed Khursheed Shah and Pervaiz Rasheed adopted a softer tone. “The prime minister should grace the house with his presence, we will hear him out with grace and respect,” the opposition leader said, trying to coax the PM to parliament.

“This is not Nawaz Sharif’s first stint as PM,” the information minister noted in response. He said the prime minister wanted to come clean before the judicial commission. “He doesn’t shy away from coming to the house, in fact, he relishes it,” he said, revealing that PM Sharif would come to parliament on Friday after a trip to Dushanbe.

“I’ve been a lawmaker for over 25 years and I know how the PM’s calendar is made, but I don’t want to get into another argument,” Mr Shah concluded, indicating he wasn’t completely happy with the minister’s response, and led the rest of the opposition from the house shortly afterwards.

Similar events unfolded in the Senate, where Aitzaz Ahsan, before leading a walkout, commented that if the PM came to the National Assembly, he should also grace the upper house with his presence, a view that was also endorsed by Chairman Raza Rabbani.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Jahangir Tareen also announced on Tuesday that it would prepare a questionnaire for the prime minister, which would contain all the key questions that the opposition wanted answered.

But drawing a proverbial line in the sand, Barrister Zafarullah Khan — the PM’s adviser on law — made it clear that the government was not going to accept certain stipulations in the opposition-drafted ToR: the demand to make the probe Nawaz Sharif-specific; the attachment of the properties of those named in the Panama Papers; and, shifting the burden of proof on the accused.

“These demands are contradictory to the Constitution,” he claimed, saying that under Pakistani law, the burden of proof could not be shifted to the accused persons as it contravened the Qanoon-i-Shahadat, or law of evidence.

When asked about similar stipulations in the Protection of Pakistan Act and the National Accountability Ordinance, he maintained that these were separate acts of parliament, which called on the accused to prove his innocence at the trial stage, not the inquiry stage.

But it was obvious that the most significant message of the day was delivered in the meeting between the heads of the civilian and military establishments. Soon after the PM-COAS meeting, the media began reporting that the army chief had asked the prime minister to expedite the Panamagate probe.

While no mention of such an exchange was made in the official statement issued by ISPR, it was obvious where such a leak could have come from.

This had a dramatic effect on the tone and tenor of the government, and government ministers took to PID to cast shade on the opposition’s demands and the intentions behind them.

Going on the offensive, Daniyal Aziz and Mohammad Zubair did not spare anyone — be it the Pakistan Peoples Party, Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid or the PTI. “These ToR are a joke; if an individual is being investigated, you cannot nominate his/her father in that inquiry,” he said, referring to the opposition’s insistence that the PM be probed alongside his children.

He accused the PTI of trying to get rid of the PM, adding “Now that they have realised they cannot unseat him through the ballot, so they are trying to adopt shortcuts.”

They counted the number of opposition-allied individuals who had been exposed in the Panama Papers leak, which included PTI chief Imran Khan’s sisters, Jahangir Tareen’s son and PTI leader Aleem Khan. Singling out the latter, Mr Aziz noted that, “Aleem Khan has stated that he will bring all his money back to Pakistan. Why didn’t he think of that when he was taking the money out of the country?”

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2016