Wilde did a superior job writing this play with an amusing story line filled with humour and satire. A man who made up a lie to find out that it was not really a fabrication, that it was reality.   

“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”

The successful opening night marked the climax of Wilde's career but also heralded his downfall.

The irony surrounding Konrad Mizzi’s Panamanian debacle is that the damage being inflicted on his political career here in Malta may fade into insignificance compared to the wrath of those he is dragging into the global glare by association – the barons of Azerbaijan, the politburo of China, the EU, the civil institutions, a woman in China, the Panamanian company, and those whose names are hidden in the registry of new citizenship of Malta.

“How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless."

"Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them."

"I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.”

How could this puny island of Malta, single-handedly, and from a woman’s hand at that, have exposed a tradition of professional secrecy and boys’ club?  This is Panama, an impenetrable fortress so strong and resistant that the EU had to black list it and here comes this €92 account holder who manages to blast the whole shebang wide open for all the world to know whose company he keeps and where.

Could they – the four musketeers of Baku – have drawn any better attention onto themselves by thinking they had foiled the public in travelling without the usual official, diplomatic and media delegation to discuss an oil agreement?  I wonder what the President of Azerbaijan was thinking when he realised their naivety?  Even African dictators wait for the dark of the night to send room service with a diamond gift, as Naomi Campbell can testify.

The irony continues, that the public are not just shocked at the implications of the minister and the Chief of Staff having the company in Panama and what purpose it really serves, but that the world must be laughing at the sheer incompetence of the OPM in not even being able to deal internationally at the highest levels without making a mess of it and dragging others down in the process.  One might also argue that Keith Schembri is the first to suffer the consequences of Mizzi’s fallout and the Prime Minister does appear to be trying to draw a line of distinction between them.  Is there?

Just like with the sale of passports, and following the massive turnout for the protest on Sunday, the international press will start to take notice.  Reuters have picked up the story so that means it is everywhere now and any newspaper or internet-site will be looking for fillers and happily select this piece about journalism reaching its mark, secret accounts and allegations of corruption in the highest levels of the government of Malta.  The Azeri press are rather keen on it too, with the latest feature being the one about the business man who opened and closed companies with Nexia BT.  Is Baku trying too, to make the same distinction between their President and Malta’s government much in the way that the PM is shielding Keith Schembri?  Since the press in Azerbaijan is not exactly Fleet Street, one may get the impression that the recent features have the blessing from above. 

It is also a blot on the honour of the European Union, where a minister of a sovereign democratic state is found to have rather dubious dealings over in the black-listed state of Panama.  Look at how angry Barroso was at John Dalli and how he went for the most drastic and immediate action on even less evidence of misconduct.  All that is left now is for the ‘Leave’ campaign in the UK to point fingers at the misguided dealings by one of Junker’s own.

I don’t think there will be many leaders and business men who will be willing to be associated with any delegation from Malta from now on.  In China the President Xi Jinping has made a platform out of cleaning corruption from the rank and system.  In Azerbaijan, they have gone to great lengths to clean up their image and join the international order.  None of this publicity is doing them any good.  When the pages and pages of press coverage had gone up about the IIP, Muscat said that it did not matter because it was foreign and did not impact locally.  The reverse is true of Mizzi’s case now.  What is being read abroad is more serious than what we read locally.

The Labour party machine can try to dig up any sort of accusations against Ann Fenech or Austin Gatt or anyone of the PN past and present hierarchy but they will not get any further than the local press, a billboard and a libel.  In just three years, however, their own super machine has landed them in the gravy well beyond a blogger’s page and Xarabank.  If they wanted to do better than the PN, they have succeeded. 

Years of discretion and social knowledge cannot be learned by the taking of a mistress or the size of one’s bank account.  If you are going to make a career of politics, it’s best to start with having a good sense of social norms, public opinion and the humility to at least realise the seriousness of abusing trust and therefore being discreet and quiet about it and above all, following protocol. Knowing when you should bow out is also essential to one’s dignity and integrity.  But with all things Labour out on the table, such as its new and refreshing liberal platform, all sense of restraint went wild. 

A clock gave way to a barge, a Swiss savings account became an international scandal, a few pavements in Gozo became acres of land and a new power station, dodgy concrete at Mater Dei became blacklisted business men at St Luke’s hospital and some poor minute-taking at Enemalta and unscrupulous chiefs became a complete absence of contracts involving millions and so on and on.

Therefore the people went to Castille.  The crowd was shoulder to shoulder and stretched all the length of Republic Street from Wembley store to beyond the law courts.  If this fact is portrayed in any other way, then really, it is not just the ex-Commissioner of Police who interprets three shots as being fired into the air when they were clearly seen and admitted to being fired at a target.

Can the government survive this ineptitude?  The problem is even worse because there are plenty of precedents of similar catastrophes by the MLP and not just in this legislature but also in the Mintoff era which the present LP leadership had hoped to be rid of.  They are now slowly re-emerging in the collective memory of the electorate.

One must however give credit where credit is due.  And that is that this current labour government has succeeded beyond any of its predecessors in bringing down itself, the Labour party, the country and a system of corruption that has served for decades around the dictatorships of the world.  Gives a whole new meaning to Transparency.

“Good heavens, I suppose a man may eat his own muffins in his own garden."

"But you have just said it was perfectly heartless to eat muffins!"
"I said it was perfectly heartless of YOU under the circumstances. That is a very different thing."
"That may be, but the muffins are the same!”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

We have been hearing so much about iced buns after all, that now they have truly taken centre stage.  The billboards will need to find another way to create aspiration.