The greatly publicised incident involving a Liverpool football player refusing to shake the hand of a Manchester United opponent, who had recently been engaged in a racism tiff with him, inevitably caused a furore both on and off the pitch. It seems people just expect you to be the ideal hypocrite as long as you appear to follow “the rules” and give out the politically correct signal. Given the media’s attention, the young man’s quick apology the following day was hardly surprising.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for the niceties of pre-match handshakes, huddles, cuddles and what have you in modern society, and of course the whole circus is not restricted to the sporting scene. They help to create an atmosphere of benevolent anticipation, with everyone finally going home believing he or she has been to a sporting or some other event where ladies and gentlemen simply acted like ladies and gentlemen. The Roman gladiators through a pink filter, sort of.

In truth, however, it is often a mere show of false mutual affection and respect. Sports and politics, in fact, have a lot in common in all this superficiality. Anyone who has regularly followed the proceedings inside the House of Representatives at close quarters, for example, will tell you of the pre-match handshake ritual before every free-for-all that ensues. As if the hypocrisy is not enough, a quick visit to the Lobby, as Parliament’s drinking hole is popularly known, will show you that friends who had become enemies have suddenly become friends again over a drink or two.

Indeed, bonhomie is a splendid thing, but when it is forced, not genuine and certainly hypocritical, it loses its appeal and becomes just a way in which we could keep taking each other for a ride. I write this at the risk of being branded a cheerless pragmatist, which I honestly do not think I am. Accepting guilt and/or burying the metaphorical hatchet are part and parcel of a dignified way of doing things in society, and I do not see why it should not happen more in all spheres of life.

Joseph Muscat gave the perfect example of this dignified approach in his speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Maltese Church imposing mortal sin on all who at the time voted Labour, read Labour newspapers and even sold them, while editors, national executive members and many activists were interdicted and refused even the simple act of being married inside a church or given a decent burial place. He rightly referred to the apologies made many years later by both the Church and the Labour Party in connection with those very sad, black days.

But he also brought up the point that there was one apology missing – from the very party that had gained the most from that ugly period of Maltese politics: the Nationalist Party. This means that while the Church and the Labour Party today can freely exchange pre-match handshakes without any qualms or hesitation, the Nationalists, who won two consecutive elections (1962 and 1966) thanks to the imposition of mortal sin by their friends in the local clergy, can only do so, when they do so, under a cloud of hypocrisy.

I believe in clean slates. There is no shame in accepting that one was wrong or even partially wrong about something or about the way one tackled an issue, just as there is no harm in remembering past conflicts and events, not by glorifying them but more by way of expressing the hope they will never re-occur. If sorry “seems to be the hardest word” for some, hypocrisy is much worse.

We are, at this moment in time, watching the country’s highest institution, the House of Representatives, being turned into a public convenience by a government that refuses to accept it has lost its majority. It is that same government that talks down to us from the moral high ground about democratic values, European standards and national dialogue and at the same time fiddles with parliamentary agendas and procedures, making a mockery of the very concept of parliamentary democracy.

The Speaker of the House, as would be expected, is certainly for pre-match handshakes. He speaks frequently about the need to give the House the respect it deserves and to promote a sense of fraternal responsibility among members of both sides. Now he finds himself in the unsavoury situation where the government he saved by his casting vote is denying him the dignity of running Parliament the way it should be run, i.e. on properly and fairly agreed agendas and on a regular, scheduled basis.

I am sure the Speaker himself would, if he could and is not bound by the hypocritical rules of so-called tradition and custom, be the first to acknowledge the horrific way Parliament is being used and abused by the desperate incumbent to help the ruling party survive, albeit temporarily, the seemingly inevitable process of implosion it is already experiencing.

We have all seen, for example, the pre-match handshakes that went on when the government and Opposition met to discuss the parliamentary agenda in the aftermath of the Franco Debono abstention in what was a one-seat majority, but what was the result?

A complete and utter disregard of the democratic process which Leader of the House, representing a lame duck government, bluntly imposed his side of the argument and that was it. I guess there were no post-match handshakes.

As Somerset Maugham once wrote: “Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.”

We can’t say this government isn’t trying.