They say a week is a long time in politics. Normally, in summer, things go very quiet in the traditional holiday month of August.

Last year, the PL and the PN had pledged to allow people to enjoy summer without the usual political sermons on Sunday and to tone down political activity to give people a break. No such luck, this year. Even on Sundays, the parties are still ‘entertaining’ us with the now traditional Sunday phone in by political leaders.

But, in truth, can they really be blamed, given all that has gone on? We have seen visa and residential scams galore, the Coast Road saga, intermittent sputtering of the electricity supply at the hottest time of the year, the dodgy Gaffarena property deals and so much more.

But it also highlights the Maltese obsession with politics and the hold that the political parties still have over us. Let us take the power cuts. Facebook is a very good gauge of public sentiment and the moment the lights went off, hundreds took to their mobile phones to either lambast or protect one side or the other.

Common sense would dictate that people would normally just shrug and head to the beach or seaside for a cool breeze to while away the time until the power came back and discuss the ramifications later. But not us Maltese. 

At least, some form of distraction was brought about by the uncharacteristic August storms. The issue though is that while the politicians spin and re-spin every single bit of news out there, people are beginning to feel that Malta is one big web of corruption. It is all that people can talk about. In the space of just a few months, we saw how permits were given out to a businessman to operate an illegal petrol station, and then go on to make a killing in the property market with what was clearly inside information. All this, while Joe Public makes his monthly pittance. No wonder people are angry.

Just a few weeks later, we learn that the Italian mafia has set up a web of crime here in Malta in its dealings with sports bettings. Shortly after, we hear about the dodgy dealings of a family which had no less than three members in the police force. Police officers do not normally drive around in borrowed Ferraris and get into business deals with shady characters. But this is Malta.

And the cherry on the cake was the fraudulent activities in obtaining visas for Libyan citizens under the premise that they were opening businesses in Malta. All the while, people have been questioning the burgeoning (and very affluent) Libyan community (war wounds and all) that is burgeoning in Sliema and St Julian’s.

It has been  a very long and hot summer so far and it seems that no end in the controversy is in sight. It truly does seem that the web of corruption has spread a lot further than anyone every even realised. It is time for something to be done about it, but turning it into a political football is also not the right way to go about it.