Now that we have been through the first week of the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the EU, the ersatz hype has already worn off.

We had the Juncker, Tusk, Commission visit but that is over.

Our Ministers are hardly here, seeing they have to be at Council meetings far more than ever before. They do issue statements, but the PR machine (DOI) keeps sending texts of speeches made. Over just one week, we had to go to Twitter and Facebook to obtain photographs of the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra concert marking the Presidency at the Bozar in Brussels and of the Heritage Malta exhibition in Rome.

Maybe the Presidency is doing its work over there but we have no way of knowing unless it is reported on international websites, which has not been the case so far. Perhaps that is a good thing too, for the press has a habit of reporting when something bad happens.

So far as I can see, not even David Casa's negative speech aimed at shaming the Prime Minister to his face at the EP in Strasbourg has made the international or specialist press.

That does not mean that the Presidency will not have key moments in the coming five months, beginning with the Malta summit and the British declaration of Brexit coming up. But already attention in Malta is focused more on the visit by the committee investigating the Panama Papers and its session in Malta.

For the truth is that all the glitter of the Presidency has not, nor can it, erase the sense of unease, of anger and of shock felt by a vast section of the population at the innumerable scandals about which the Maltese debate day in, day out. The Presidency was never intended to outweigh internal matters and the Maltese - like people anywhere - are always interested in local politics and rarely in basking in glory and fame.

Even the defenders of the present administration are also giving every indication of focusing on internal matters, and tending to give the Presidency a miss.

And I do not think that anyone in the ruling party ever thought the Presidency would outweigh internal problems. The Presidency, in other words, has turned out to be a double-edged sword: its glory side makes Ministers go more and more abroad, while the adversaries, who have no such burden, have all the time they need at their disposal to continue with their agitation. Had the roles been reversed, I have no doubt that this is what the then Opposition would have done.

There was a time when the government could have reasoned that the Panama Papers scandal would blow over in time with some counter-spin thrown in. This has not happened. The Panama Papers issue has festered on, it has not gone away and it is still as toxic today as it was a year ago when the scandal broke. The fact of the matter is that by refusing to shake loose Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, the government has allowed its toxicity to spread and multiply so that today the Panama Papers are spoken by many in the same breath as the government of Malta.

But meanwhile, quite distinct from the Panama Papers, a host of other scandals have now erupted, on at least a weekly basis, focusing on people other than Konrad Mizzi or Keith Schembri.

Contrary to the impression that is being generated, this does not mean that all members of the Muscat Cabinet are tarnished with allegations of corruption. There are people in Cabinet who try to do their job to the best of their abilities and it is unfair for them to be lumped with the general impression of a corrupt administration. I mean people such as George Vella, Carmelo Abela, Chris Fearne, Jose Herrera, Manwel Mallia, even Edward Zammit Lewis - Air Malta and all. I would not include Owen Bonnici both because of some signal mistakes in the way he managed his brief and also because of his self-imposed role as the angel of vengeance with regard to Jason Azzopardi.

But by a misplaced idea of loyalty, even they are being tarnished by the general feeling of sleaze and corruption that has become a generalised and accepted description of this administration. And try as they can, the hard-working elves trying to dig up scandals of yesteryear cannot remove the stench of today's scandals - and that's not counting the times when, as they did with Jason Azzopardi this week, they get it abysmally wrong and are caught out.

 

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