There are all the signs our country repeatedly falls victim to tempting diversions which deflect national attention from what is really important.
The first diversion, I find, is what is happening inside the Nationalist Party. We have been on this roller coaster ever since the election result and Simon Busuttil's half-resignation. It has been a national topic of conversation ever since.
The party has now changed all its top posts but its national placing, at least going by polls, has plummeted. Nevertheless, stories from inside Dar Centrali still dominate the media. I am tempted to think that, apart from the self-promotion of some, this serves as a diversion from far more important business.
This would include all that happened in Parliament last week when the Opposition vote was split, including all those reports on the party's financial state and its plans to plug the hole.
Then, at least going by what is prevalent on the social media, we have the usual themes - the traffic, the roads, the road hogs - beating all the other themes - the environment, migrants, etc. But even these can be diversions to distract from the really important issues.
One really important theme is the real state of our economy. A week ago, we had the IMF report on Malta, but, as a leader on this paper's sister daily said: "The press and public are given one version of the IMF's findings and recommendations by the government press releases and self-congratulatory statements, while the real statement itself, when one cares to look it up and sift through it, tells a slightly different story."
It adds: "One will not read in government statements that the IMF advised the government to wean itself off the IIP programme, to contain and prioritise public sector spending, to better supervise and regulate the financial services sector and to sort out its act when it comes to money laundering.
"The IMF in fact warned the government that it must not become overly-reliant on the Individual Investor Programme. As is common knowledge, the much-lauded budgetary surplus registered last year was a result of IIP revenues.
"The IMF also advised Malta to sort out its spending on public service, the size of which has mushroomed since 2013, saying that the government needs to increase public spending efficiency, including through an extension of the in-depth reviews to the broader public sector.
"And it once again warned that the growing size and complexity of the financial sector represent a challenge for supervision, something the country has been familiar with in the wake of the Panama Papers and Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit scandals.
"It called on the government - in the light of the increasing number of financial firms under supervision, the rapid development of new products, and the evolving regulatory environment - ensure that the Malta Financial Services Authority is 'adequately resourced to preserve its operational independence, to improve its capacity to retain experienced staff, and maintain effective supervision'.
"In terms of money laundering, undoubtedly a sore point given the aforementioned scandals, the IMF called for a 'robust implementation and effective enforcement' of the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) framework, which it said is 'critical given the fast-growing remote gaming activity and the high demand for the IIP'. Along similar lines, the IMF also called on the government to finalise the related National Risk Assessment and transpose the EU's 4th AML Directive into national law."
One must remember that the above comments are in line with the IMF's remit. For other issues, such as whether the economy is overheating, if we are seeing the build-up of a property bubble, if the rental situation is getting out of hand, if the lower classes are finding life harder for them - the solutions to these and other queries lie within us, the country's population.
The second and even more fundamental issue facing our country is law and order, which inevitably brings into play Daphne's murder and who commissioned it. Manuel Delia wrote yesterday that the government has been softly peddling a theory that puts the blame for the murder on a Mafia connection with links to Italy (Sicily) and Libya.
On the other hand, as an article on yesterday's UK Times said, the government seems to be steering attention away from the Azerbaijan connection and consequently the possible involvement of some Maltese politicians.
At this point, more than a month after the spectacular in-your-face-Malta murder, the trail is getting cold and foreign spin-doctors are having a field day. Other issues, such as the outcry over the Police Commissioner and the Attorney General and what the Maltese MEPs did or did not do at the European Parliament fade into insignificance.
Whoever commissioned and carried out the murder must be laughing his head off seeing how we ended up wrangling and running around like headless chickens. In a way, this mystery resembles what happened in Lebanon when bigger countries wanted to destabilize it.
Therefore, it is not just who did it that is important, but also the strategy behind it - making us get at each other's throats and causing mutual suspicion. Before becoming a failed state and being in effect taken over, even Lebanon had its banks, its property magnates, its casinos on the Corniche.
The two political parties are weak, weaker than they imagine. Quick to take offence, quick to wrangle, quick to hit out, they have forgotten the inestimable value of acting together and putting up a common front. But that would mean disowning their own leaders and that would not do.
We are being kept distracted and at loggerheads when our national unity is essential. And the national unity we are speaking about is not that ephemeral unity we witnessed on Sunday at the President's fun run but a far more radical national unity that is not there yet. It is not a question of finding who killed Daphne, though it is that too, but of going beyond the smoke screen and seeing what the smoke screen does not want us to see.
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