A SINGLE appearance may not mean a victory for the rule of law, but it is a welcome and important step towards equal justice for all. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif`s appearance before a joint investigation team empowered by the Supreme Court to probe the first family`s finances has few precedents in the country`s history. Several prime ministers have faced corruption allegations in the past and some have been ousted from office.

But none have faced the kind of forensic scrutiny that Mr Sharif is likely to have been subjected to yesterday. If the JIT conducted itself professionally and if Mr Sharif attempted to answer the questions put to him frankly, the democratic project will have received a welcome boost. Stable, mature democracies hold public officials to account, but always in a fair manner. For now, given Mr Sharif`s public statement after his JIT appearance, it can be assumed that both sides approached the session in a respectful and cooperative spirit.

Perhaps Prime Minister Sharif`s appearance before the JIT will help reset the mood around the investigation and the court proceedings that will follow. The JIT has been mired in far too much controversy, a great deal of it avoidable, for anyone interested in the strengthening of democratic institutions to be comfortable. A process with implications as grave as the potential disqualification of a legitimately elected prime minister ought to be conducted very differently to what has been the case so far. But the Sharif family and the PML-N government must also bear some responsibility for the multiple controversies. At its core, as the prime minister`s prepared comments yesterday again suggested, the PML-N appears to believe it is the victim of a vast conspiracy against the Sharifs personally and the government generally.

The Panama Papers, however, cannot have been and must not be allowed to become tainted as a conspiracy. A global dump of secret records, the Panama Papers ensnared public officials and private citizens across the globe. More than 11m documents with information on nearly 215,000 offshore entities that were pored over by over 100 media organisations in 80 countries the sheer scale of the Panama Papers is so overwhelming that only hubris could lead any one person or family named in them to believe that a conspiracy is afoot. In truth, the papers revealed troubling questions about the Sharifs` financial practices and appeared to contradict previous public statements about the family`s wealth and assets. Whether those practices and statements are a violation of Pakistani law is for the JIT to establish and the Supreme Court to decide. But all sides need to reconsider their positions. The JIT must focus on its work, the government must allow the JIT to do its work and the Supreme Court should ensure that the JIT can do the work it has been tasked with.