Labour has now replied with a massive crowd to the two PN protests held over the past weeks.

Each soundbite by one side is being replied with a soundbite on the other.

Each allegation by one side is being replied by an allegation of the same weight on the other.

Such is political dialectic as we practice it in Malta.

Obviously, only one truth can be true. There cannot be two opposite truths.

It thus follows that of the two, one side must be lying, or, to put it in softer terms, spinning away to mask the inadequacy.

For a long time, after the discovery that Konrad Mizzi had (together with Keith Schembri) a company in Panama, the issue became, not whether that was true or not but rather what was Prime Minister Muscat going to do about it.

The head of government prevaricated for a long time, doling out one-liners to the media which besieged him. Then he promised to abide by the result of an audit. So far, there is no trace of this audit.

Then, when many had given up hope he would do anything about Konrad Mizzi, he removed him from minister in charge of energy and of health but left him as a minister, housed at Castille, tasked with implementing specific tasks.

Then came a ministerial reshuffle that created further discussions as to the manner in which it was made and how the choices were made.

At the same time, Dr Mizzi’s resignation from the party’s deputy leadership sparked off a race for that post, with one nomination so far (Chris Cardona) but others reported to be in the pipeline.

So we are not left wanting for lack of political excitement.

The problem is: while all this is going on, the country is still marching on and nobody seems to be minding the shop. It is true that the figures regarding our economy still look very good but decisions must be taken and they have to be taken. We cannot take our hand from the steering.

If we but look outside our shores we can see myriad problems coming up – from what is going to happen to the EU, which we are now part of, to the immigration wave which may divert our way again, to the battle engaged in our neighbor Libya between the Libyans and ISIS, to whether the UK will vote to leave the EU in next month’s referendum, to Malta’s financial services in the context of particular issues and the eurozone’s tightening of rules and regulations so as to avoid another 2008.

All these threats need a steady hand at the tiller of our country. We cannot allow the dialectic between the parties, important though that might be, divert our national attention from what is really important.

At the same time, the fact that the Konrad Mizzi issue has not been brought to closure but has been left open, and the fact that the reshuffle which that issue brought about has in turn opened up further issues leads us to think the whole issue is being mismanaged on a colossal scale, with consequences we may not visualize at the present moment but which will surely gravely impinge on our national life.