One might think that the issues we are facing these days – the Panama Papers, Bank of Valletta, Nemea Bank, etc -  all have a separate genesis and arise from different sectors.

At the same time, however, there is something that unites them, and that is that they all regard Malta.

And there is a second something that unites them all, and that is the MFSA.

Now to bring everything together, the MFSA itself is being called into question.

Minister Evarist Bartolo has twice, and in Parliament, questioned the top level of the authority.

And now an anonymous Facebook page has joined in casting even more severe allegations regarding MFSA.

When Mr Bartolo launched his first attack, he was rebuked by some of his own colleagues on the government’s bench and especially by Finance Minister Edward Scicluna.

This is already a very serious matter for we cannot remember two Cabinet ministers expressing such divergent, even contradictory, opinions. There is such a thing as collective responsibility and this seems to have gone AWOL in this case. When journalists asked the prime minister about this, he was quite laidback about it.

Such a divergence is not usually seen in other countries and, with financial services having such an important role in the country’s economy and with so much pressure on financial services around the world, we can ill-afford such calling into question.

The government, the Finance Ministry and also Parliament, the Opposition and the Public Accounts Committee must have a look and see what is going on.

It is true that Parliament gets an opportunity for an overview when it reviews the estimates of such authorities but in view of the importance of the sector such overview cannot restrict itself to an annual debate when such matters are brought up.

The least that can be done is to sit Mr Bartolo down and ask him what exactly is his beef with MFSA and its chairman.

One would also have expected the authority to reply to what is being claimed by Mr Bartolo if it does not intend to reply to scurrilous allegations in an anonymous webpage.

For we are indeed living in ‘interesting times’ in the midst of this huge partisan polemic about the Panama Papers. We have heard people claim that Mr Bartolo’s allegations are yet another attempt by the government to distract the national attention. And now we have seen the anonymous attacks on the chairman claimed to be yet another destabilizing PN spin.

It is after all one thing to keep silent in the face of polemics or adverse comments so as not to upset the stability of the sector and it is quite a different thing to keep silent because there is nothing one can say.

The sector is so very important for the Maltese economy, for the people who owe their living to it, for the companies who have relocated to Malta because of Malta’s superior jurisdiction.

The sooner the issue is closed, and by closed we do not mean buried under the carpet, the better for one and all.