Those who can take a step back, as well as those who have been around some time and so have become used to the scene, can possibly see it, while those who take things at face value may not.

It is clear that the government has been badly hurt by the Zonqor university business and its ecological pretensions have been shattered.

There has been widespread popular outrage and it is, or was - as we shall see - far more widespread than the few hundreds who followed Simon Busuttil and Marlene Farrugia out into the wilds of Zonqor last Sunday.

The government lost the segment of its following that claims ecological sentiment, the various ecological groups and those who otherwise would rather have been seen dead than rubbing shoulders with PN.

First of all, the sequence of events gave the game away. Instead of calling for expressions of interest and then narrowing the choice to the selection of the site, everything came packaged and ready, not just with site selection but also with the selection of the preferred partner and the ultimate set-up.

For all the timid noise now being made by those, like Leo Brincat, who say the government is still searching for an alternative site, it is clear now (and has been clear for quite some time) that Zonqor university it is and Zonqor university it will remain. It's not called Zonqor for nothing.

Nor is it true that it will inject new life into the forgotten South. The only benefits will be in property prices, from which those speculators who have been busy all these years buying property around Zonqor will benefit. Otherwise, as an article in yesterday's sister paper said, only halal bars and halal shops will be allowed to flourish. And as for dormitories...

So, in short, the government lost it and realised it had lost it.

Since then we have assisted at a recrudescence of corruption claims. Maybe the government had no hand in their recrudescence, as they may well have had autonomous gestation. But they came very conveniently in the nick of time and the government was very able to jump on them, spin them up and keep the public amused and engrossed with them.

There were two Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The first one came from Gozo in the "votes for work" case. I have my own sources in Gozo and they have spoken to me about the Whistleblower and about how Gozitans see it.

Whatever impression is spun in Malta, this is very different from the reality the Gozitans know. You see, they know the Whistleblower. And they know what has long been taking place, is still taking place and will probably still be taking place in Gozo in the centuries to come.

For all the shows that have been made, the accused and accuser trudging up the narrow steps of the Gozo court, the wild rejoicing you can actually hear that Giovanna, the former Queen of Gozo, has been laid so low, for all this, the wheels of justice will have to have their time and space until the dross of public rejoicing falls away and justice, real justice, is allowed to emerge.

We have been through this before. The late Sandy Cachia Zammit would have had a lot to say, had he still been around.

The second WMD is the Mater Dei construction saga and the stability of the entire building. For all the PN initial spin about John Dalli and his brother's role through Mixer Ltd, the government's barbs are finding their mark and the PN is making very heavy weather of it - firstly, for not exercising proper supervision at the time and secondly, for not remedying the situation as soon as it realised what was going on.

The government spin machine may have tripped over its own feet by focusing on the waiver issue and hounding the former FSS chief and now PN CEO. For, as Lawrence Gonzi has pointed out, the waiver does not rule out legal proceedings in the event of bad workmanship. Still, news bulletin after news bulletin, they keep at it.

Nevertheless, the rule should have been that whenever there is a huge public project involving heavy vehicles and large quantities, unless there is a stringent quality check all the time, there will be (possibly massive) corruption.

There was slight reference in one of our papers recently to the time when the airport was being extended - referred to the many lorries that made a living out of carrying nothing. It was, if I get it right, the lorry in, lorry out (the last Lorry being, obviously, Lorry Sant).

It would seem the same thing happened when the Freeport caissons were being dumped in the sea.

It is inconceivable to us ordinary citizens that there was no quality assurance in place to check on the quality of the cement that was cast. If I remember correctly, the bulk of the present Mater Dei was built in a race against time to beat the 1996 election deadline. It did not meet this deadline, but by then the hospital, at least its outer skin, had been built. To complete it - with the finishing of the wards and the medical equipment - took umpteen millions and more than a decade.

The rush was then concluded with an even madder rush to open it up which meant seeing the system was operational and signing off each and every department and piece of equipment prior to handover.

We can see this happening in our time, too, as the current surge in public work of any kind that is funded by the EU us rushed to conclusion before the 2015 financial period ends. Hopefully, there will not be any such snags in the future, but the government should be warned that, unless the proper procedures are put in place, we will have similar cases again.

And then corruption claims will no doubt return, this time on the other foot.

Where does all this leave us? This is the political season and the two sides battle it out with every weapon they have at their disposal. In my view, the government, faced with a public outcry on the Zonqor university, countered by its own WMDs - the Gozo works-for-votes saga and the Mater Dei cement saga.

I would not say these two WMDs outweighed the Zonqor outcry. Mainly, people forget, people move on to the next item that comes along. People no longer get hot over the Zonqor issue, since most of them have no link to the place, but they all react to the Mater Dei saga because, sooner or later, that is where they will end up. And they do care that they will not end up in a mass of cement.

Typically, I believe, the whistleblower's nickname is Sansun and this reminds me of the saying 'Morto Sansone e tutti I Filistei' ('Dead Samson and all the Philistines'). It has even more resonance when applied to Mater Dei and its flaky cement.

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