My way or the highway.

In every election since 1990, Syed Khurshid Shah has been returning to the National Assembly from one of its seats in Sukkur. He is a polite and friendly type and has cultivated many friends, even among diehard critics and opponents of Pakistan People Party.

As a result all look genuinely upset with his arrest by NAB Wednesday, although whispers about his arrest had been in circulation for more than two months.

At the outset of Thursday sitting, Raja Pervez Ashraf, a former prime minister, stood to protest against Shah's arrest. Nawab Yusuf Talpur followed him. PPP was not alone in expressing their anger.

Almost each member from the PML-N benches also kept pressing buttons to seek the chair's attention. But Qasim Suri, the deputy speaker, turned stern. He firmly believed that more than the deserving time was consumed in discussing the arrest of Khurshid Shah. It was time to deal with agenda set for the day. The opposition remained unwilling to let him proceed.

What really provoked the opposition to act insolent in an already deeply polarized house was the speech, Murad Saeed, the youthful minister of communication, had delivered over the matter.

With self-righteous anger, the unforgiving minister looked amused with opposition's expression of sympathy and solidarity with Khurshid Shah. In sadistic binge he kept questioning the upward mobility of the arrested MNA and kept referring to his relatively humble origins with contemptuous mocking.

Through the speech of Murad Saeed, the PTI government also sounded as if firmly conveying the message that 'looters and plunderers' faking as 'politicians and people's representatives' could not be forgiven. NAB is an autonomous outfit anyway and the Imran government does not feel motivated to rein it.

Perhaps the government felt the need of reiterating its corruption-fighting resolve in the context of 'hopes' that Shehbaz Sharif's meeting with his elder brother in jail, thanks to 'special permission, had triggered among the opposition parties early this week.

To scuttle these hopes, the Prime Minister has also begun to repeatedly assert of late that the corrupt-types in the opposition parties must not expect any mercy from him.

They should forget that increasing tensions with India since August 5, might force the government to seek some reconciliation with its opponents in the name of cementing 'national unity.' Ruthless accountability of 'the looters and plunderers' will continue unabated.

The arrest of...