Like most of you reading this piece, I am grappling with a political reality.

A political reality I never expected to materialise just three years after the enormous rush of a resounding Labour victory, I strived hard to bring about.

Our Labour Government is imploding.

My mind is struggling to comprehend, to take it in, digest it, believe it. Like a bad dream, a nightmare. It is difficult to express the shock in words. But I will try. The feeling is akin to the piercing pain of bereavement. Or the earth shattering loss of a very close friend, a family member. Then, occasionally nature itself comes to the rescue.

It softens the shock with the overwhelming bouts of numbness, giving the mind precious moments of respite, only to enable it to cope with more and with worse.

What hurts me most is that I promised the electorate to deliver a style of government that commands authority not by force, but by breeding respect because of its good, transparent, accountable governance.

I harbour this deep remorse that I convinced so many voters to give this political movement a chance.

Therefore, I find it very disconcerting that it is becoming clearer by the hour that the government I helped to elect is turning out to be the most opaque, closed government this country has had in years. Countless contracts and memoranda of agreements signed behind the people’s back and kept out of the public domain.

I also told my voters that we had a road plan for a clamp down on corruption which was gnawing away at the administration, and eroding our general standard of living.

We will tackle bureaucracy I said, so many times.

Instead, the government I helped elect for them weakened the institutions which protect the citizen so much, that bureaucracy has rocketed and corruption has become the order of the day.

The endless string of scandals, from Australia Hall to Strada Żekka, Fuel price hikes to Azerbaijan, China and Coffee for the Premier, to cancer factory and invisible power stations, has left us aghast, to put it mildly. And every time more salt is thrown into the wounds by the nonchalant official reaction to each debacle.

The credibility of the government has been undermined so much, that it is now impossible for the present Cabinet to reassure the electorate of its ability to deliver a basic, clean administration.

We invested so much time and energy to rebuild trust in a Labour-led political force fit to govern, only to watch our hopes and aspirations for real change, smashed into smithereens against a wall of oligarchic, arrogant behaviour and excesses that have totally conquered Castille.

It is very sad that the ultimate blow to this Labour Party Government had to come from the very ‘face’ of the last elections.

How could a government Minister, expected to inspire trust in his own country, which happens to be a financial jurisdiction of repute, even think of choosing a dirty, EU-blacklisted jurisdiction like Panama over the safe financial set up our country and then justifiably boast about what it can offer?

Why Panama with its ties to money laundering?

How can a minister who blatantly chooses blacklisted Panama over Malta for his financial arrangements convince the electorate of his good intentions, or inspire investors to bring their savings to our shores?

How can those of us who blindly trust their investments in Malta, not wonder and worry about what could have led our Supremacist to stash his wealth away from our shores?

Then there is the issue of the PM Chief of Staff who, it seems, also prefers slimy Panama over our homeland.

It is such a shame that our much coveted ‘change’ in the way we do politics has taken this turning.

And yet, through all this disappointment and sadness, the bottom line is that there is no room for giving up on our dreams for our country and our children’s present and future. So , what are we supposed to do? It seems that, for the time being, the least we can do is to keep pummelling this government, individually as citizens, NGOs and political groupings, in the hope of forcing it to clean up its act and deliver exemplary governance, before more damage is inflicted on our country’s reputation.

Then , when the time comes we will remember stuff and express our judgement.

Let’s hope that by that time we will have a credible alternative, that spares this beleaguered electorate more disappointment and bereavement.