Yesterday was a field day for observers of a country in a surreal mode. We say this so as not to say a schizophrenic country.

At 8pm on Sunday, the Panama Papers were unleashed on the entire world, with thousands of documents retrieved from one of the biggest financial services practitioners in Panama, a country long under suspicion of hiding accounts stashed there by people who wanted to evade taxes or being caught.

Since then, the entire world has been agog with the revelations emerging about famous people who had hidden accounts, ranging from David Cameron’s father to a musician close to Vladimir Putin and all the way back to the Gaddafi millions, etc.

Reputable news services and media, like the BBC and the Guardian, to name but two, have dedicated to the issue ample space, the BBC itself keeping the issue as its top story for more than 24 hours.

Among the persons mentioned in the huge list, there is Maltese Minister Konrad Mizzi, the only minister in the EU to have been found to have an account in Panama.

Yet Dr Mizzi himself doggedly and incredibly argued that the Panama Papers confirmed what he had said about his own account and that these papers brought to ought all the Nationalist spin in his regard.

He repeated this mantra both outside and inside Parliament yesterday evening.

As the Leader of the Opposition said in rebuttal, this was completely surreal. While in the entire world all those who were found out to have accounts hidden in Panama were hiding, or even facing calls for resignation, here in Malta a minister was boasting the Papers were proving him right.

The country’s main television station, Xandir Malta, oh sorry TVM, dedicated to the issue an interview with the Consul for Panama who argued Panama is not such a bad country and is improving its regulatory stance.

In Parliament, the Prime Minister did not utter one word to defend Dr Mizzi but let him defend himself. He then spoke on general terms, pointing out two important facts:

-         That all this talk is having an incalculable impact on Malta as a financial services country. On this theme, the Leader of the Opposition concurred, pointing out that Malta faces incredible pressure from the rest of the EU to tidy up its game.

-         And that this issue is not allowing the country to appreciate the good that has been done by this administration.

So it does seem there are chinks in the steel carapace the government has been trying to build around itself ever since this issue cropped up. The government is finally admitting this case is harming Malta’s international reputation as a financial services centre; Malta faces redoubled pressure from the other EU Member States especially as regards taxation of foreign entities; and this issue is completely distracting the people’s attention from what the government is doing.

This reinforces and re-emphasises the question the country is asking: why does the prime minister still holds on to Minister Mizzi when this case, even in his own words, is harming the country?

The prime minister keeps repeating that if he finds that Dr Mizzi has lied, he will force him to resign. But as the Leader of the Opposition rebutted, (and as we say today) Dr Mizzi has already lied, repeatedly lied and kept getting tripped up by his own lies.

The question thus acquires a more impellent force: what is keeping the prime minister from taking this step, once he has already taken a similar stance in the cases of people, as he said yesterday, who are very near to him?