In what kind of forlorn country is the former opposition leader and current spokesperson for good governance called in to the police headquarters to answer to allegations that his car was used for hanging up of posters, while the real crooks in government remain untouchables?

The irony this whole sordid story that broke yesterday, the punch line if you prefer, is that those posters were created in the first place to spell out the misdeeds of those members of government who, really and truly, ought to be under investigation.

As Pia Zammit said on Monday evening in Valletta at a vigil commemorating the sixth month since the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia: ‘This is not a normal country’.  She could not have hit the nail more squarely on the head.

It was with impressive speed that the police summoned Busuttil yesterday, he will answer to those summons this afternoon, just a day after a government-leaning newspaper published photographs of Busuttil’s private car, licence plate included, in an article taking him to task because that car was used for the distribution of those tongue in cheek movie posters hung up around the island recently.

But, it seems, even here the police and that particular newspaper seem to have got the wrong number: Busuttil’s partner later said it was she who had used the car.

Yet still Busuttil is being hauled in to the depot to face questions, in a situation so far removed from normality that the head spins.  Again, in what normal country would this happen?

Not only is such action by the police seen as being completely tone deaf considering the circumstances, but it also appears to be a complete charade aimed at deviating attention from some of the real ills affecting the country, and turning that attention to what is apparently a rabble-rousing Simon Busuttil.

Someone at the police force, or wherever the order to question Busuttil came from, really needs to have a better grasp on reality.

The sheer gall to haul in Busuttil over the posters, but to have never even dared to lay a finger on any of the subjects of those posters, is beyond belief. Things are clearly far from ‘normal’.

In what normal country could someone like Busuttil be investigated over posters, and don’t forget that bogus investigation that had been held into the use of petrol for his official car back when he was opposition leader, when the Panama Papers people - Office of the Prime Minister chief of staff Keith Schembri and Minister Konrad Mizzi – never even had an eyelid batted in their direction by the police?

Even after the exposure of those leaked Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit reports implicating the pair in so many, to put it politely, questionable activities and plans, the police did not lift a finger and had insisted "there is no reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, which might lead to an investigation."

Could not the police have investigated and then found no reasonable suspicion, and in the process set at least some of the public’s minds to rest on the issue?  How could the police have expected people to believe there was no reasonable suspicion without first investigating the accusations?

The suspicion is, quite simply, that they must have been told to have said just that, just as they must have been instructed to investigate Busuttil.  And while this remains a suspicion on the tips of many a tongue, the police have unfortunately failed to provide any assurances to the contrary - neither by word nor by action.