The government is pulling out all its stops and piling on the spin.

It has focused on former minister Jason Azzopardi and brought all its heavy guns to bear on him.

Minister Owen Bonnici has held countless press points to press the Opposition to sack him, including holding one such press point at 7.30am in front of the PN HQ, including trying to make statements in the House just after Question Time, including countless press conferences, statements and the like.

This pressure climaxed yesterday after so many programmes on TVM, coincidentally under Minister Bonnici’s remit, including spots on Dissett and also Xarabank.

Only for the truth to emerge from the NAO report where it has lain hidden all this time and nobody noticed.

The government spin was that Zaren Vassallo, a life-long PN supporter, must have given money to the PN in government for being given the Lowenbrau factory for cheap.

Instead, the truth, the whole truth, is now out: it was not Mr Vassallo who paid a pittance for that prime site but its previous owner, Marsovin, at some point headed by minister John Dalli. Mr Vassallo paid the full price, €8 million, where Marsovin had paid just a measly €465,000.

So to get at the truth you have to stand the government spin upside down and then it starts making some sense.

Whether Mr Vassallo donated to the PN coffers hardly matters: he paid the full price for the Marsa property.

Why this was not cleared up earlier, why the government spin balloon was not punctured earlier is not clear: maybe it was sheer inability to see things in their proper perspective, or maybe there was something else we do not know about.

Certainly too, what we now know, must have been known to the government all along. It isn’t as if the government was not aware of the real timeline of things. So the inevitable conclusion is that the government willfully and deliberately twisted the facts to create a spin that serves its aims and intentions.

The government spin put a huge store by alleged contacts between Mr Vassallo and Dr Azzopardi and says it has the means to prove this. In the light of what has come to light yesterday, that’s sure some friendship, to be made to pay €8 million instead of €465,000.

There is also, at least according to the reports now coming out, and subject to verification, that sure sign of things not being on the straight and the narrow: the konvenju, or promise of sale, or preliminary agreement, was signed on one day, and by the next day authorization was asked, and was obtained, by the Director General Lands for the ground rent to be redeemed. Only, in this case, the Commissioner of Lands  was off on sick leave. The contract was signed the next day and a crucial clause simply disappeared..

The Auditor General investigated this deal and found in its recent report that neither the minister responsible for Lands, Tonio Fenech, nor the Parliamentary Secretary responsible for Lands, Jason Azzopardi, were in any way involved in all this.

Yet the Labour government simply went ahead with its spin machine to try and crush one of the most valiant of its opponents. That this spin balloon has now exploded is a source of joy for all those who believe government is for everything except for spin.