Over the past months, the Labour Party has been waging a media campaign after another in order to persuade the country and the few vacillating MPs on the government side that this heinous government and its Prime Minister had awarded themselves a salary increase of €600 a week, while enforcing strict austerity on the rest of the country.

Spin was added to spin and the campaign culminated last Saturday morning, with l-orizzont, for instance, entitling its front page: Ma jistgħux jinħbew (They cannot hide) with a big picture of one vacillating MP, Jean-Pierre Farrugia.

All it needed – they tried it some months ago with the party media primed to expect a negative vote against the government and the beginning of the end – was for some more pre-government collapse spin around.

So we must ask, did Roderick Galdes get a €500 wage rise a week and keep it quiet? The question could also be asked of Anthony Zammit: Did he too get a €1,100 weekly wage increase and not tell us? And Silvio Parnis, did he get an increase of €270 a week and not tell us?

Dr Gonzi, as usual at his best when in a tight corner, revealed small nuggets of information last weekend: That three or four years ago, (hence in the previous legislature) he had corrected a previous anomaly by means of which a government employee had to resign from his post once he was elected as an MP.

This meant that they could now keep their jobs and also get the full MP’s remuneration.

In practice, it meant that Anthony Zammit, a well-known and respected consultant, got to keep his consultancy, which gave him at that time a remuneration of €1,137 a week, plus getting the MP’s honoraria. Silvio Parnis, who works in the Department of Health, got to keep the €270 he makes from his job and get the honoraria as well. And Roderick Galdes, who rather incongruously is both a Mepa employee and also sits on the Mepa board, gets to keep the €566 a week he makes at his job and get the honoraria as well.

There is nothing wrong in this, let us hasten to say. The situation in Malta’s Parliament is anomalous in that being an MP is considered as a part-time job, when in fact we all know it absorbs 100% of the Members’ efforts. So whatever MPs work at – lawyers, doctors, self-employed – their parliamentary honoraria (which is also rather on the low side) is received in full. To this, they naturally add the revenue from their day-time job. That is only fair and right. In the same way it is also acceptable that Members who are employed with the government get to keep their salary and also their honoraria.

What is not fair and right is that the Labour Party mounts a campaign portraying the government as an insensitive Scrooge for giving ministers the same right that was given to any MP who is government-employed. What is also not fair is for the Labour Party and these particular MPs to keep silent about the fact that they were given what ultimately amounts to this remuneration increase while at the same time baying that the government is a cruel thief.

Had this small fact of these three MPs’ remuneration been acknowledged and accepted in public, then all wind would have been taken from Dr Gonzi’s sails. But no, this small fact was kept hidden, away from public gaze. The important thing was to persuade one or two of the vacillating MPs to cross over and Bob’s your uncle.

No wonder then, that the vacillating MPs vacillated no more, no wonder then the anger and bile from the usual suspects on the Sunday morning comments, no wonder then, the anger in the Labour ranks.

On Monday, the three Labour MPs issued a statement in which they rejected attempts by the Prime Minister to link the fact that they receive two salaries, with the controversy over the raise given to ministers. The three MPs said the difference between their situation and that of the ministers was that they were not receiving a double salary for the same work. Their full-time work, they said, had nothing to do with politics. The ministers, they said, were being paid twice for the same work.

This is rather weak (and anyway it came after the details were revealed) and is also wrong: Ministers are not receiving a double salary for their ministerial job. They are receiving a salary for their ministerial (government) job, in the same way as the three Labour MPs are receiving a salary from their government job, and their parliamentary allowance in the same way as the three Labour MPs are also receiving.

We agree the whole issue was mishandled and riddled with mistakes, at least on the procedural level. Certainly, however, the Opposition spin has been shot down as a damp squib.

To try and get this issue out of partisan controversy and to be discussed objectively, as the Prime Minister offered on Saturday, would be perhaps the best way out of the impasse, but one would probably be asking too much in the hyped post-divorce referendum days.