As Franco Debono continues to hijack the national agenda, aided and abetted by his Evil Twin Jeffrey, Opposition leader Joseph Muscat continues to escape public scrutiny. As these two continue with their hideous cabaret act, drawing down further opprobrium on themselves and seemingly oblivious to how shameful and despicable their behaviour is, Muscat continues with his free and unencumbered race to the polls.

We are all so busy looking at Debono, which is exactly how he likes it, and then again at Pullicino Orlando, who cannot bear to be outdone by his Evil Twin and must always pull a bigger and better stunt, that we have forgotten how when parliament is dissolved they will cease to matter. But when parliament is dissolved, Muscat will be that much closer to becoming prime minister.

Debono and Pullicino Orlando are forcing our eyes off the ball. That ball is Muscat, and his gang of rejects and odd-balls who are set to make up the next government. The political and media life of the Evil Twins has at most until the first two weeks of December – just another two months. Then they are both politically dead and buried, unless the Labour Party is mad enough to take them on, and they are cheap enough to do it.

The Budget is usually presented to parliament around the middle of November. The debate on the Budget carries on until the first week or two of December, after which MPs vote on it. The Opposition whip is for a No vote. The government whip for Yes. Franco Debono has committed himself to voting No, with the Opposition. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando has kept his mouth shut about his intentions, but recent past experience tells us that whatever he says, he doesn’t necessarily mean it and might do the contrary.

When, and not if, the government loses the Budget vote because Debono has voted with the Opposition (and possibly also because his Evil Twin will do the same), the government falls – a government that loses its Budget vote falls automatically, because without Budget approval it is out of business – and parliament is dissolved. An election is called for some six weeks later, but the Franco-and-Jeffrey combo dies an instant death with the dissolution of parliament, and not with the general election, because it is with the dissolution of parliament that they lose their seats. And without their seats they are not members of parliament, and so their opinion counts for nothing – because there is no more damage they can do.

But meanwhile they hog as much of the limelight as they possibly can, and the media reports what they say and do because at this stage it is significant, not in and of itself, but because of the damage they are doing and because the general public has become at once morbidly fascinated and repulsed by these high-level displays of massive and unprecedented egocentricity. We have never seen self-obsession and paranoia on such a grand scale. Watching it is embarrassing.

Joseph Muscat, meanwhile, breathes easier. Nobody watches him. No one asks him questions. We are so busy discussing Debono’s cracked comparison of the prime minister to Adolf Hitler (“because of what he did to ME and the country”) that we are not taking time out to ask our future prime minister exactly what he plans to do with his premiership other than lead us up the proverbial creek to leave us there without a paddle.

We continue to scrutinize the outgoing government’s every word and action, while failing to grill, scrutinize and examine the incoming government. What will Muscat do? How will he make things better, and how will he make them worse? Which of his star candidates are likely to be ministers in his cabinet? Are his men reconciled, after almost a decade, to the fact of Malta’s EU membership, or are they still smarting against it?

And then we have the most important question of all: where in heaven’s name is that electoral programme that Karmenu Vella has been working on for the last couple of years? Perhaps the dog has eaten his homework.