This crisis just refuses to go.

We have had corruption cases before: Café Premier, Gaffarena, the American University of Malta all come to mind. They’ve all come and gone. It took them some time, but then the government sloughed them off and they retreated to a corner of the national memory.

In this case – call it ‘Panamagate’ for want of a better word – the stain refuses to go. The case festers on.

The government has pulled out all its stops. It tried denigration, through focusing on Ann Fenech and a connection between her company, Fenlex, and Panama. Billboards were created, the lady was hounded – not just for her company’s single case of advising on an investment in Panama so many years ago, and before her time, but also for taking so many government contracts under both the preceding one as well as under the current one.

All those who know her at work – I spent a week touring the Gulf with her and Lawrence Gonzi – know how she takes on a huge workload that leaves her aide breathless.

She is the best legal brain in maritime affairs and this is not just the case now but has been so for years and years. She has an international reputation as one of the best examples of Malta’s professional class. She is one of the best representatives of the practitioners in financial services.

But nothing seemed to count with whoever thought up this tactic – not even the harm this does to our international reputation. And all this just for one sound bite – which is then not true – that she has a company in Panama.

Maybe this works with the braying rent-a-crowd on Xarabank and maybe, seeing how representative this is of the country as a whole (see the results of the survey – very 1987-ish) this works with the country as a whole. Throwing Ann Fenech to the wolves is a measure of the desperation that has gripped the government.

And yet, the crisis refuses to go. Morto Sansone e tutti I Filistei.

So we have the Prime Minister and the silent Finance Minister opening bank after bank and praising the financial services sector, the fruit of bi-partisan cooperation going back years, while the PL elves try to douse the flames caused by Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri by dissing the same financial services.

They tried the libel case tactic, which in my experience is often what people who are at fault do to stop an unwelcome story. It did not work.

They even tried to soldier on, as if the scandal had fallen by the wayside. On Friday, the Prime Minister called a press conference to list the achievements of this three-year-old administration. That did not work, either. The questions were about Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri and the rest of the press conference was pushed into secondary news. TVM – after so many days of silence – was finally forced to refer to the case.

Nothing worked. The issue has remained in full public focus. The thing is that, so far, no really new items have been found, yet the issue has remained. Right in front.

I have one explanation. Maybe there are others, but what I think is keeping this issue in the public eye is the gravity of the case itself, in that a minister has been found to have a secret company in a dodgy jurisdiction. But even more than this, it is because the Prime Minister seems unable to dispense with Konrad Mizzi. It is this last factor, I contend, this sheer obstinate refusal by Dr Muscat to do what he has done with so many others who, at one time or another, threatened the good name of the government.

Either he does not want to, or else he just cannot shake Konrad Mizzi off.

The country is thus wondering if there is more to this than meets the eye. This suspicion has been rendered all the more plausible because what the Prime Minister did next was to make Dr Mizzi deputy leader of the Party, even changing the Party’s statute to do so. He had already given Dr Mizzi a hefty ministry and, when Godfrey Farrugia was forced out of his ministry, quickly appointed Dr Mizzi to that post as well, joining the two jobs in an unnatural manner.

Three years ago, Dr Muscat could tell his supporters to walk on water and they would have probably obeyed him. Now, credibility dented, he elicits cries of anger among his supporters such as the raucous shouting on Xarabank on Friday.

Dr Muscat has been busy kicking the can downstream. He has commissioned an audit firm to analyse the case but is sure no trace of corruption will be found. We have not been told the name of the audit firm, but the Prime Minister is certain no trace of corruption will be found.

The issue has grown and grown – from the non-issue it was at the beginning, when it was regularly skipped by the likes of TVM, to a central issue, a signature-tune of a government in crisis. No new elements have been added – at least up to the time of writing this – and yet the issue remains at the forefront of national concern.

It has created a government within the government. There is a central core and then there are those who sit on the sidelines, who never comment, who keep their heads low. To them one must add the number of people in positions of authority who have gone AWOL on their beat.

Other than just resisting and continuing to resist, it is difficult to see what Dr Muscat’s future path is. He can spend his Sunday morning conferences listing the achievements of his administration but the attention will remain on what he has to say about the Panamagate case. To carry on as if the crisis does not exist won’t wash. To attack by bringing other people in, such as was tried with Ann Fenech, turns into a boomerang.

There is only one way out and Dr Muscat has been resisting being dragged there with all his might. But he – and with him his government – are being inexorably pulled nearer and nearer to the sinkhole. There has to be an outcome that recomposes the drift within the government.

I am reminded of similar government hard-headedness in 1981, when Labour was in power thanks to the 1981 election that gave Labour more seats and the PN more votes. For months and years, Labour continued to refuse to face facts but in the end it had to give in and majority voting came into being.

In this case, it is not the government majority which is at stake but one single, albeit important, minister.

[email protected]