This government spends a great deal of time boasting about how liberal and secular it is. That would be why, then, it harasses journalists and critics, hates the free press, and rounds up sub-Saharan African immigrants for deportation while allowing the thousands of North Africans brought in on suspicious visas, since 2013, to stay.

Yes, it is so liberal and secular that it goes out of its way to target the Archbishop who regularly tweets criticism of its policies, and pays an aide to the Prime Minister to sit at a desk in the Prime Minister’s Office and blog obscenities about him and other people the govern either fears or does not like.

But then, when the head of state – a former minister in this same government and a former secretary-general of the troll-like Dom Mintoff’s party – received a letter a couple of days ago from the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, requesting that 30 days be knocked off every prisoner’s sentence to mark the church’s Year of Mercy, Marie Louise Coleiro Preca passes it on to the government and the government obliges. Not only does it oblige, but the Minister of the Interior and the Archbishop sit on either side of the head of state (the latter at her right hand) to announce this to the press.

Over in London, would the Home Secretary knock 30 days off the time still to be served by all those in British prisons, if and when he receives a similar letter from Pope Francis? Of course, he wouldn’t – and just imagine the furious popular reaction if he did, not only because prisoners, including murders, paedophiles and rapists, got 30 days off, but more properly because the Home Secretary acceded to the Pope’s request. “But Britain is not a Roman Catholic country,” I hear some of you say. Well, exactly so. It is run according to secular norms. That is what this government claims to do in Malta, but doesn’t. You can’t legislate for same-sex marriage on the one hand, then knock 30 days off the time served by all prisoners just because Pope Francis asked you to do so. Make up your minds, because your behaviour is nuts.

Muscat’s party has proven itself expert at committing all sorts of anti-democratic atrocities and even illegalities (vide Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, and those are just the two about whom the facts are on record) then seizing on some minor bit of rubbish to do with the Nationalist Party, or some other real or perceived opponent, and kicking up a storm of a fuss about it, making it seem as though its opponents are the real criminals.

They work on the fact that most people don’t read beyond headlines and only gather from what they hear and flick through that something is afoot. So right now, it’s “Jason Azzopardi is guilty of breach of privilege”, Azzopardi being the shadow minister for justice, who accused the actual Minister for Justice, in parliament, of having lied. He was right. Bonnici lies habitually. You only have to ask his wife. But you don’t even have to do that. It’s a matter of public record, given that they are now formally separated, that his marriage broke down under the strain of his constant lying and cheating. People who lie where it matters most are going to lie to the public, in parliament and to their colleagues. Put simply, if you will lie to the person with whom you share a bed and a child, then you will lie to anyone. That the Justice Minister is a liar is a matter of fact; whether he lied to parliament on matters specifically connected to the sale of EU passports and his dealings with Henley & Partners might be open to interpretation. Like Jason Azzopardi, I think he did.

The Speaker, who has ruled on the matter, does not. But then he would, wouldn’t he? The Justice Minister has only recently obliged him nicely with a corrupt deal in which the Speaker’s daughter, still in her early 30s and with no experience except for a bit of pottering about in daddy’s office, with daddy holding her hand, has been made a magistrate for the next 30 years until she retires, a post from which she cannot be removed and which comes attendant with a chauffeured car for 365 days a year over 30 years, all communications expenses, a comfortable salary, the power to wreck people’s lives with inept judgements. This island is so corrupt that it sickens me.