Children love summer. They simply love to play by the sea, in the sea and on the sand. Many go to the sea loaded with bright-coloured plastic buckets, spades, castles, and of course, the inflatable animals (dolphins, crocodiles, and so much more).

As Joseph Muscat’s pre-election boasts begin to seem outright fraudulent, the Prime Minister’s bravado can easily be compared to the boasting of a child on the beach. The man who boasted he has the best Cabinet and most feminist government in history (yes, it’s so evident to us all now) is like the child boasting with his friends that he has the biggest, the brightest, the best dolphin with matching bucket and spade.

The similarity with children ends there. Children enjoy carrying sand and building castles. Muscat makes no such personal effort. His “friends” make the messes. He lets only his “friends” build the castles (on ODZ sand, of course). To keep other children quiet, he gets someone else to buy them an ice cream as a token of appreciation.

The comparison isn’t perfect for another reason. Yes, Muscat could easily be one of those kids but this summer he has a problem – his pride and joy, his inflatable dolphin, is deflating.

He has tried to hide this from all those (young and old) who admire him, particularly those who were hoping to get a ride on the dolphin itself. So far he has managed to keep the dolphin afloat and, while no one was watching, he also pumped some air into it. However, the little tiny holes are becoming bigger and the hissing noise of deflating plastic is becoming obvious to too many people.

There are gaping holes like the Gaffarena-Zammit-Castile scandal. This week there is a new scandal. Joe Sammut, ex-treasurer and ex-candidate of the Labour Party, and who remained always closet to it, is being charged with fraud, misappropriation and falsifying documents.

This new scandal is sealing the perception that corruption in Malta is not only rife but, worse still, institutionalised.

If charges are true, and if Joe Sammut really did create several hundred false companies in return for residence permits, then we need to know who was helping him at the Malta Financial Services Authority and who was helping him at Identity Malta. This could not have been a one-man-job. Several people have to either be incompetent at what they are supposed to do or else they are involved in Sammut’s alleged scheme.

Of course, Identity Malta is also responsible for the infamous citizenship scheme. So what guarantees do we have now about the transparency of this process? Given that it is increasingly clear that rigorous process is not exactly this government’s strong point. Indeed, due diligence is so weak that it gives rise to the suspicion that un-rigorous process is actually part of the whispered sales pitch.

Is Muscat, the main salesman of the citizenship scheme, ready to give us his word that we are not harbouring shady characters among our midst simply because they are loaded with money? Keeping in mind, of course, that the value of his word is decreasing daily and is not worth much anyway.  

I wonder, when Muscat boasts of huge foreign investment in Malta, is he also including the Joe Sammut businesses?

This government, which only three years ago looked so promising to a vast majority of our population, is fast becoming a fake promise, a fraud. Muscat has let everything get out of hand. He has lost the plot and is fast losing all sense of credibility and good governance. His attempts at kite-flying to distract us all are constantly proving to be futile and ineffective.

Muscat himself is deflating. The several caricatures in last Sunday’s papers and even in the daily sister papers are showing the emerging widespread perception. Muscat is the young politician who ridiculed more respected politicians to out-shine them in an election. However, his constant tone of arrogance and disrespect to his opponents continues to bring out his weaknesses.

The Joe Sammut story is a loud reminder of what Anglu Farrugia had once said about the PL links to big money. Farrugia had tried to clean up Labour some ten years ago but had only made it as far as the Naxxar PL committee. Some genuine Labour activists must really be kicking themselves hard because now they are discovering that Muscat was elected thanks to their hard work but is scornful towards anyone who does not speak the language of money.