Ched Evans, 26, is a British former Sheffield United striker and convicted rapist. He received a five-year prison sentence, of which he served two and a half years (he was released in October), for raping a young woman in a hotel room three years ago. He was sacked by his club and can't get another football job in Britain. At the merest suggestion that Sheffield United would try to re-engage him, 165,000 people signed a petition in protest. When Hartlepool said they would like to take him on, the move was over-ruled.

Now Maltese club Hibernians says it wants to sign Evans and will be making him an offer. This has triggered a little bit of angst, but not so much. The way rape is regarded in Malta tends to depend on who is doing the raping. If it is a black African immigrant, then the rape is a hideous crime, the woman is a piteous victim of a truly terrible thing, and the only suitable punishments are hanging or castration. If the rapist is an unremarkable-looking white British footballer, then the thinking seems to be, "Come on, how bad could it possibly have been?" And if the rapist is good-looking, then of course the woman should have been grateful for the opportunity. Lots of people here seem to be pretty backward in failing to understand that rape is not about sex and it is not an act of sex. It is about violence and it is an act of violation. What the man looks like is completely irrelevant to his victim.

Yet in misogynistic Malta, this is barely comprehensible. Aren't all the girls clamouring to have sex with footballers? So it must be her fault. And all the poor guy did was take advantage of one who was right there in his hotel room, a sort of living pillow gift to ring the changes from the usual chocolates. Even the Justice Minister, of all people, thinks this is a fuss about nothing. Of course it's perfectly all right for a convicted rapist to be signed by Hibernians, Owen Bonnici said, because "everyone deserves a second chance". For a Justice Minister to say something so outrageous is most ill-advised. Rape is hardly shoplifting a T-shirt when at a low moment. But then the Justice Minister is clearly conditioned by his own situation. He is not a rapist, but thinks he deserves a second chance himself. Yesterday afternoon he was strolling brazenly along the Sliema front - Ghar id-Dud, to be precise - arm in arm with Labour Party TV reporter Janice Bartolo, for whom he has left his wife, a hardworking nurse at the state general hospital, and child. So I don't think anybody should take seriously the Justice Minister's views on second chances for rapists and the like. He's a little befuddled right now.

We shouldn't take the Prime Minister's view seriously, either, even though on the face of it, it looks like the proper thing to say. "Footballers are role models," Joseph Muscat tweeted. "Hibs decision will define them and to an extent, Malta. I hope mgmt understand this clearly before final decision." So in Muscat's world view, footballers are role models, but politicians are not. He doesn't think that Hibernians should sign a convicted rapist who received a five-year prison sentence, but meanwhile it's perfectly all right for him to sign somebody with a revenge porn conviction and a two-and-a-half year prison sentence, to celebrate him publicly, lionise him, raise him to his right hand, embrace him before the cameras, call him a 'soldier of steel' and then reward him with a job at Dar Malta in Brussels and the chef de cabinet post in the same building for his partner, so that the two need not be separated.

The word we're looking for here is hypocrisy, but then it seems obvious that the Prime Minister's real concern is not whether a convicted rapist makes a suitable role model for Maltese men and boys, but what this is going to make Malta look like in the eyes of the British press and the Great British Public. He doesn't want the bad publicity. Had Ched Evans been convicted for publishing photographs of his victim having sex, and in other compromising naked positions, instead of being convicted for raping her, that would have put Joseph Muscat in quite a fix. What would he have said? No doubt he would have thought of something, and then his sidekick Kurt would have tweeted it. As for the Justice Minister, here's hoping for his sake that his paramour isn't snapping away and building up a store of ammunition. Given that this has now been established as a career path in the Labour Party, and Cyrus Engerer is celebrated as a role model, you never know. But never mind, Owen Bonnici will be the first to say that she should be given a second chance.