So Michael Falzon is the fall guy, as he was set up to be all along. Yes, he should have resigned – and in effect, he didn’t, but had the Prime Minister sack him instead. But then the Prime Minister should have stepped down before he did, because he is the Minister responsible for the Government Property Division. Falzon is merely his underling.

Yet all along, this was the pattern that developed. Muscat distanced himself from the scandal by shoving it firmly onto Falzon, and letting him stand alone in it. He behaved as though he had nothing to do with the mess at all, even though he is Minister for Government Property. And at yesterday’s press conference, he stood behind Michael Falzon as he read out his bit, and behaved as though he was the stern and worried headmaster who had just found a pupil cheating and made him own up to the rest of the class. What rubbish is that?

The Auditor-General’s report is damning, of course it is. But there are no significant new facts contained in it. All the facts were known already, thanks in large part to the media and not to the political parties, neither the government nor the Opposition. But that was not enough for Muscat to take action. No, he said he wanted the Auditor-General’s report. Did he imagine, perhaps, that he could “persuade” the Auditor-General to issue a quite different report?

This is the utter hypocrite and opportunist who, during the general election campaign, pretended to sack Anglu Farrugia as his deputy leader because of a remark he passed about a magistrate, on television. We know that the real reason Muscat fired him was the fact that he performed so badly on television and embarrassed him, and Muscat wanted to get rid of him to bring the switcher-magnet Louis Grech on board instead. But that’s not the point.

So Deborah Schembri will now join the cabinet instead of Michael Falzon. How is that better? It isn’t. There’s something odd about Schembri, something on which I can’t quite put my finger. She doesn’t seem to be quite ‘together’ somehow. When she’s speaking, you get the feeling that she’s not quite there, not quite focused. She doesn’t seem to be particularly bright, either – not that this has ever held anybody back in the Labour Party. Look at Silvio Parnis, for instance. Still, I don’t imagine that the Prime Minister had much choice. After having stuffed his cabinet with what passes for the best of the bunch (and that’s not saying much), he’s left with the dregs. I suppose Manuel Mallia is agitating even now for a return to the cabinet.

Does the cabinet matter, though? The faces of all cabinet members seem to have disappeared into the background as those of Konrad Mizzi and Joseph Muscat, always glued to each other’s hip on trips to Baku, Beijing, Algiers, the Gulf States and Montenegro, are projected increasingly to the fore, obliterating those of all their colleagues except for the bar-hopping Chris Cardona. It’s becoming ever clearer that the Prime Minister and his henchman Konrad are operating together and separately from the rest of the cabinet, and that they are up to something. But as long as they’ve slit Michael Falzon’s throat on the altar of expediency, the gods who protect them from being found out may yet be appeased.

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