This past week the country has been shocked to the core to see with its own eyes the fragility on which its government stands: the fragility of one single MP who is hugely in denial – Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.

One does not have to be a psychologist or psychiatrist to realise that, going by his appearances on Bondi+ and Vici-Versa, Dr Pullicino Orlando is still hugely in denial, so far disconnected from the reality as he himself describes it as to constitute a danger to himself, let alone to the government he upholds.

This is immediately evident even from the article he sent in last week and which appeared on this paper last Sunday, as well as from his two television appearances. There is simply no dialogue possible with him: all he kept uttering was diatribe after diatribe against Alfred Sant; he insisted on speaking in turn and out of turn and he tried many times to shut out all those who saw things differently from him – all clear psychological markers.

What he seems to strongly believe is that, just because he was not included in the list of people to be investigated further, following the advice of the Attorney General, this is a sure signal that he has been totally exonerated of all guilt, not just criminal but also political.

Last week he spent thousands of words, both in writing and on television, yet for all those words his cause became less and less clear and his contradictions became more and more complicated.

He went on and on about how he was “misunderstood” or how his words had been twisted when he said he did not know who the applicant for the Mistra development was but, once that is clarified, the issue is still barely scratched. For the point is not whether or not he knew who the applicant was, but rather the following questions:

Does he or does he not stand to gain from the development of the land in question, to the tune of e1.9 million over 15 years and e2.25 million after that?

Can he really argue that he spoke to the Mepa liaison officer on behalf of “his” development just as he spoke to him about his constituents’ applications?

Then there is the little matter of the contract which he now admits he revealed to Dr Gonzi on the Thursday before the election. To refresh his memory: Dr Gonzi first learned of this document when faced by it in the last TV debate before the election. Dr Pullicino Orlando confirmed its existence at a meeting to which he was called by Dr Gonzi immediately after the debate. One can still see how shocked Dr Gonzi was from the tapes of the last mass meeting, when he must have concluded he and his party had lost. Can Dr Pullicino Orlando now say he had informed his party leader about all his involvement right from the beginning of the saga or did he keep crucial details from him and thus allowed his party leader to be hammered by his opponent in such a crucial debate?

By admitting, though willy-nilly, that the land belongs to him and that an application to develop it has been lodged, the former Green Politician loses his green credentials. He is no worse than so many other developers and/or speculators who buy up land in ODZ and then somehow manage to find ways to pressure Mepa to allow them this one-off development.

He has been saved so far (though there is a libel case on this issue) by Alfred Sant’s axe rather than rapier method of claiming this was a clear case of corruption and money must have changed hands. This may prove impossible to prove and anyway it does not grasp the essentials of the case.

The other Alfred Sant mistake was in his running away from confrontation with Dr Pullicino Orlando when any confrontation, given the right parameters, would have proved Dr Pullicino Orlando guilty. That propelled Dr Pullicino Orlando to a notoriety on the eve of the election, turned him into a hero and as the focus of all those whose aversion to Alfred Sant proved to be the leitmotif of the election.

No wonder that Joe Saliba, the very man who had accompanied Dr Pullicino Orlando to the Alfred Sant press conference that was aborted and who most probably provided him with a party press accreditation, now says that, were it himself, he would resign. No wonder Dr Gonzi, appearing more and more uneasy whenever the subject is brought up, rejects any thought of appointing JPO to Cabinet now or in the mid-term reshuffle.

It is salutary for government to understand the implications: there goes, anytime JPO passes by, the government’s fragile, too fragile, majority: a man clearly in denial, a man of whom no one really has any way of knowing when and in what direction he may eventually snap.