Whatever the result Ira obtained last night (Good luck, Ira, who I remember as a Year 6 student at the Sacred Heart in the same year as my niece), the past days have been a textbook case for studying the unique ways in which this country's psyche works.
We all know that for the Maltese, the Eurovision song contest is not a contest at all but a test of national worth.
We flopped and were beaten countless times, every year we rage at the neighbourliness factor that gets countries to vote for their neighbours, every year we say it's not worth it and we should imitate the Labour government of the 1970s when Malta did not even compete, and yet year after year we compete and come the evening we gather round big screens hoping, hoping, hoping till the douze points go elsewhere.
But this time round there was a certain something else that has only surfaced, if that is the word, over the past few days.
Actually, it may have begun much earlier. It was clear, say people who follow the contest, that it was pre-determined that Ira should win. Even when she won with one song, she was allowed to change that song. In previous years, the winning song was tampered with, sometimes disastrously, but never changed. The people who voted for Ira voted for Ira and that first song, not for Ira and the second song.
Yet, incredibly, we have not heard any whimper of protest from those who came second, third etc at this change.
It was Caroline Muscat of The Times who broke the story on Friday claiming that Malta's Eurovision bid had a limitless budget. This story was denied by Tonio Portughese, the PBS chairman, on our sister daily yesterday but significantly no denial appeared on The Times yesterday.
That, in a way, did it. Speculation on what could have been the political background exploded in a big way, based, it would seem, on the involvement of people who work at the Office of the Prime Minister in the Ira bid.
That also explained Ira's otherwise incomprehensible foray in LGBT politics, boasting that Malta is No. 1 in this area - until we realize that one prime contender for the prize last night was Russia and we all know how Putin's Russia looks on gays, and the strength of the gay lobby.
If Ira had to win Eurovision for Malta, so ran the spiel, 2017 would be a wonder year for Malta with Malta holding the EU presidency and with an election coming up in the following year. Malta would really be 'walking on water'.
Such an event, improbable though it may appear, would wipe away all memories of the Panama Papers and galvanise the Maltese people in a way that only Eurovision does in Malta. Remember when Ira Losco, draped in a Maltese flag, returned after narrowly missing the first place in 2002?
No wonder that arch-blogger Il-Bocca (Andrew Borg Cardona) got his signals wrong and in an unguarded moment (and thick finger syndrome) spelt his fear in a post, for which he later apologized profusely.
We live in parallel worlds, and paranoia reigns supreme. It's all a matter of believing the worst of your enemies, as they probably do about you. Malta really, really, walks on water.
In the past years, when we were still outside the EU, Eurovision finals were an ersatz substitute for us. We could not hope to make it in football, where we got beaten any time we ventured outside Malta. But to sing a song and somehow hear the sweet sound of douze points was music to our ears.
This has become our national DNA even 12 years after we joined the EU. We still prefer to make the grade through success at Eurovision than endure the hard work that making the grade in so many other areas entails.
This needs qualifying. There are many areas in which Malta is doing well, and we do not need to walk on water to be a success. Only this week I received a magazine, Sigma, and I was astounded to see how many Maltese entrepreneurs, and also foreign residents, have set up online betting companies.
Another magazine, Think, shows the wide variety of scientific work being undertaken by university students.
Yet on Thursday Eurostat reported that Malta had suffered a 5.4 per cent decrease in industrial production in March, the second worst result in the EU. We may be walking on water in other sectors but in this we are slowly sinking.
And the world moves on. Regimes are toppled in Brazil and the Philippines, the Brexit referendum in Britain is fast approaching, and so is the US election with Donald Trump facing up to Hilary Clinton, with all the imponderables of this choice.
While we in Malta still have to adjust to a government that allows a key minister to have an account in Panama (and remains a minister, notwithstanding), and now hitting incoming tourists with a €0.50 bed tax per night they spend here.
We do, don't we, walk on water.
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