My guess is that the Nationalist Party asked for a meeting with Malta’s special envoy to China Sai Mizzi believing that it would not have been granted this opportunity. If the government had refused to accede to the PN’s request for leader Simon Busuttil to meet Konrad Mizzi’s wife in Shanghai, the PN would have scored a major victory.

But the government saw through the PN’s plan and, by accepting to have Mrs Mizzi greet Dr Busuttil on her own turf, at the Malta consulate in the heart of China’s commercial capital Shanghai, the Nationalist Party has now lost one of its trump cards.

When last week Sai Mizzi came to Malta, rather unexpectedly, to take part at the signing of the memorandum of understanding reached with Huawei, there were many who thought that she was here to avoid meeting the PN leader, who had embarked on a weeklong visit to China. There were many in the PN who hoped that she would not have made it back to Shanghai in time to meet Dr Busuttil. If this had happened, and if somehow a pre-arranged meeting would have been cancelled at the last minute, the PN’s victory would have been even bigger.

But it was not to be. The meeting was held as scheduled, and after being “finally found” in Malta, as Sai Mizzi herself declared at the Huawei event, she was found in China too.

To regain some of the lost political mileage, the Nationalist Party said that during the meeting with Mrs Mizzi, Dr Busuttil told her face to face all that the PN has been saying for the past two and a half years – that she, as Minister Konrad Mizzi’s wife, should not have been appointed to the post, that her salary at €13,000 a month is way too high and that the PN is disappointed with her work. In reply, the government’s chief spokesman denied that the PN leader had had the courage to be so blunt.

Whatever happened in this he-said-she-said exchange, it is the PN that comes out on the losing side in this situation. It can still argue about nepotism and a high salary – and it would still be correct on these points – but it now cannot say that Sai Mizzi is nowhere to be found, cannot be contacted and has done nothing for the country.

Of course, not all was a defeat for the PN in what will be remembered as the Sai Mizzi week.

Sai Mizzi should have found a better way than to describe herself as a “salesman” in her first ever public appearance in Malta. And, if the government did not want her to speak up during the Huawei event, she should have been told beforehand, rather than having the Prime Minister twice stopping her directly as she attempted to reply to a question.

It did not look good at all.