I watched, for my sins, Friday’s edition of Xarabank (actually I was working and work included reporting on that programme).

I do not intend to go into the whole Gaffarena case nor into all that was said on Friday. Nor, at least in the beginning, into what Michael Falzon said.

I want to focus here on the person sent by the government to make its argument – Minister Owen Bonnici, a young and normally affable politician who usually is the voice of reason, in Parliament and outside it.

I cannot even understand why it was Dr Bonnici who was sent. The Lands Department does not fall within his ministerial remit. The government has many more senior politicians than Dr Bonnici, but for some reason it sent him (and backed him up by a vociferous and out of control rent-a-mob, sorry, audience).

Quite possibly, the government sent Dr Bonnici hoping that his voice of reason could defuse the sticky situation following Michael Falzon’s resignation. Or could it be because Dr Bonnici has PBS in his ministerial portfolio?

Whatever the reason, it failed miserably. Dr Bonnici the calm and rational politician so unlike the Labour template of old disappeared, and instead the mask fell and Owen Bonnici became a rabble-rouser just like the old Labour we remember from the 1980s.

There he was, interrupting Beppe Fenech Adami and repeating the same three or four words, wanting Dr Fenech Adami to call him corrupt so that he could presumably sue him for libel.

He, but not just he alone, turned the debate into a farce. From that moment onwards the discussion, such as it was, about Michael Falzon’s resignation disintegrated into partisan cat-calling with no one left the wiser.

Now I do not think this happened just like that – because it so happened. On the contrary, I see in this the hand of a master spinner. The government is in such a weak position after Dr Falzon’s resignation that any calm and dispassionate discussion of the case would inevitably end up in condemnation of the government. So no calm and dispassionate discussion could be entertained. Hopefully, the interrupting and haranguing minister and the baying crowd would stimulate Labour supporters to think along party lines. Whatever the rest of the country may think now is not of immediate importance.

Maybe, as I am seeing on the social media as I write, Owen Bonnici could be the successor of Toni Abela as Deputy Leader for Party Affairs.

(Toni Abela too morphed from being a rebel and an outcast to being in the core of the party, exemplifying the party’s ethos – but not the Moviment at all)

The end result is that once again the issue, the real issue, the Gaffarena case, has now been so kicked around and turned into a political football that it is hard for both the party faithful and the neutrals in the country to understand anything. The political smokescreen has worked once again.

Actually, the surest sign the government is to blame for the case is precisely because so much effort has been put in to obfuscate the issue and turn the debate into a slanging match.

In reality though, the issue is crystal-clear and the clear-eyed person in all this is the Prime Minister himself who (I wouldn’t say pushed but certainly facilitated) led Michael Falzon to resign.

I have noticed this in Joseph Muscat – at the end, he always follows the sanest advice. Other people before him, including his predecessor, faced with the same situation would have defended their Minister against anything and everything. On the contrary, Joseph Muscat just lets them go. He did this with Manwel Mallia and now he has done it with Michael Falzon.

His counterpart, Simon Busuttil, possibly learning from him and also from the drubbing in 2013, did the same with Giovanna Debono and Joe Cassar. Politics in Malta has never been slippier.

With Dr Falzon gone, the issue will slide into the national black hole of forgetfulness, along with the scandals that preceded it.

Nor was Dr Falzon’s self-defence that impressive for a lawyer defending his own name.

His avowal that he has done nothing wrong, taken no money, kept hitting the rock later raised in the debate: So why have you resigned?

Actually, amid all the cross-debate, Owen Bonnici gave a sort of answer to that (as highlighted by MaltaRightNow) that there had to be something wrong. This was the direct opposite to what Dr Falzon kept saying that he had done nothing wrong.

Nor was Dr Falzon right to claim this was all a hatchet job by the National Audit Office for a complaint he had registered some time back with regard to its official Keith Mercieca.

As was immediately pointed out by The Times’ Kurt Sansone on Friday night: “The last time I saw and heard Keith Mercieca, the NAO official accused tonight by Michael Falzon of being politically motivated, he was standing his ground on the Enemalta oil procurement report which found failings in Austin Gatt’s running of the corporation. In August 2013, Mercieca was being grilled by Beppe Fenech Adami in the public accounts committee over his findings and Mercieca defended his conclusions all the way. It seems this Mercieca has no problem stepping on politicians' toes whatever colour they are. I hope Falzon has the proof to back his accusation because as things stand it sounds hollow and baseless.”

I was there and can confirm this word for word.

Besides, this charge by Dr Falzon is directed at the NAO as a whole and not at just one individual. And it is too trite for words. Were it true, Dr Muscat would be highly irresponsible to allow such a hatchet job on his Minister.

There are now siren voices – we heard them on Friday – saying now was the time to look ahead, maybe at the re-engineering of the Lands Department that was spoken about, at what Dr Falzon’s successor Deborah Schembri going to do in the department.

Yes, this is all important, but not as a smokescreen to tide over and hide what happened.

It is true the department was in a mess, had been so for ages, and one suspects there were some big rats running around there. Dr Falzon says he did his best to straighten out things. But let me tell him one he neglected to do: it was raised by his predecessor Jason Azzopardi in Parliament last week: in his short tenure there, Dr Azzopardi had started to introduce digitization of the department’s files.

He should explain more what he tried to do, rather than speak about it to an empty House at 9pm. It is not just a technological improvement: digitization would make files accountable, and tamper-proof. And officers could deal with the same file contemporaneously.

Well, this process was reduced just after the change of government. Would it have avoided what happened? I don’t know but it surely could have helped.

And, as Arnold Cassola said on Friday, the basic mistake (and not just by Dr Falzon) was the mass intake of party activists, called persons in a position of trust, who suddenly, at a young age, found themselves running a sensitive department.

If Dr Falzon were to quit self-defence mode and engage in an honest appreciation, he should blame the big rats he found in the department (but did nothing about) and also the Young Turks he took with him as his ministerial staff.

Deborah Schembri is warned.

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