The drama surrounding the federal sponsorship inquiry has ramped up considerably over the past week.

Many eyes will be tuned in Monday morning, which marks the beginning of a two week period during which we could hear testimony from former prime minister Jean Chretien and his successor, Paul Martin.

No prime minister has testified in front of a public inquiry in over a century.

The sponsorship scandal re-ignited when Chretien and his lawyers announced they wanted Justice John Gomery removed from the helm of the sponsorship inquiry.

Chretien lawyer David Scott will demand Monday that the 72-year-old Quebec Superior Court judge step down from the five-month-old hearings.

Chretien's legal team made a submission last week demanding that Gomery recuse himself, arguing that he showed bias in media interviews he gave before Christmas.

Among their claims are suggestions that Gomery made "highly inappropriate public statements" which prejudged the inquiry's findings before all the facts are in, and that he has failed to reassure them of his impartiality.

Lawyers for Prime Minister Paul Martin's government, meanwhile, announced their backing of Gomery Friday, setting up a showdown with Chretien over the inquiry's future. They will argue Monday that the Justice should stay where he is.

During a discussion with co-host Mike Duffy on CTV's Question Period, Ottawa bureau chief Craig Oliver said:

"My guess is Gomery certainly isn't going to step down and Chretien's gang knows that. What they want to do, I think, is undermine the credibility of (Gomery's) final report, which they think will be critical of them and say, 'See, told you all along, he's biased.'"

Duffy added that if Gomery refuses to recuse himself, "then the Chretien people could go to the Federal Court of Canada just down the street, where other Liberal appointed judges would decide whether this Liberal-appointed judge is biased or not."

In a roundtable discussion with The Globe and Mail's Jane Taber and Toronto Star National Affairs reporter James Travers, Duffy asked if Chretien's forces have that much anger in their system to take things to federal court.

"I think they will. Chretien is not a guy who backs down," said Taber. "And David Scott is one of the top lawyers in town, in the country. He knows what he's doing and he'll push it."

Travers pointed to Gomery's decision to choose Bernard Roy as his lead prosecution lawyer.

Roy will be questioning Chretien, former minister of public works Alfonso Gagliano, and long-time right-hand man to Chretien, Jean Carle.

Known as a tough interrogator, Roy was also best man at the wedding of former primer minister Brian Mulroney, and served as his senior assistant during Mulroney's first mandate from 1984 to 1988, when the Liberals were in opposition.

Chretien's team claimed the selection of Roy suggested a lack of judgment by Gomery in his politically-sensitive work.

"There are many people in the province of Quebec or the rest of the country who could have been chief counsel,'' an insider in the Chretien camp told the Canadian Press.

"Why would you pick him?"

Gomery's choice, said Travers, gave "a partisan sense to it that Mr. Chretien was almost certain to attack," and that "anyone who has followed federal politics over the last 10 years knows that nothing ever incensed the (former) prime minister as much as an attack on his integrity."

"And it hurts Mr. Martin tremendously," Travers added. "He can't win out of this because if by some reason the commission is stalled, he is hurt politically with that. He is certainly hurt with the reunification of the party."

". . . it's getting vicious again and Paul Martin doesn't need that."

The money spent on the sponsorship program under Chretien's leadership was supposed to be aimed at promoting national unity and fighting Quebec separatism.

But about $100 million went to Liberal-friendly ad agencies and other middlemen who often did little work to earn the cash.

With files from The Canadian Press