There was a time, not so long ago, when the Maltese population had become intimately acquainted with the Central American country of Panama. Many people who previously could not even readily find it on a map were quickly schooled on its hats and, in particular, on its highly secretive tax and fiscal regime.

Whereas ‘Panama’ was the word on the tips of everyone’s tongues not so many moons ago, the word appears to have, by and large, all but vanished from the vernacular.

In the wake of the Panama Papers releases, the Opposition held two national protests against corruption – both well-attended and which received a great deal of media attention.

There were two parliamentary motions – a no confidence vote in Dr Mizzi’s respect, and a motion concerning the Office of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff – that saw fireworks in the House, but no one being fired as a result.

There was also the Cabinet reshuffle that was more of an exercise in applying cosmetics than a tangible political exercise answering the calls from the public for heads to roll over the Panama Papers’ revelations.

After weeks upon weeks of anticipated concrete action by the Prime Minister, the end result of that reshuffle was nothing but a half-baked solution aimed at appeasing the public, but one which failed miserably in what was required of a government in a modern democracy.

There may have been some changes on the peripherals but when it came to the core issue of the crisis the government was in, the situation remained exactly the same: Konrad Mizzi remained in place and was even arguably granted more power than he had before, and Keith Schembri emerged unscathed in the slightest.

But a week, it is said, is a long time in politics and a couple of months can, at times, seem to be an eternity. Since the stripping of Minister Konrad Mizzi’s previous hefty portfolios of health and energy, the man himself appears to have crept back into the woodwork as a minister without portfolio.

The beleaguered Dr Mizzi makes rare public appearances these days, the last of which to our recollection was in Parliament when he rose one evening to speak on behalf of the Prime Minister who was abroad that day, and the Opposition staged a mass walkout of Parliament.  Since then, it has been a case of near complete silence from those quarters.

Meanwhile, it was hoped [and assumed] that, at some point, the police would have seen it fit to investigate the allegations against the minister and chief of staff. But according to the Police Force, there is no reasonable suspicion of any crime having been committed in the wake of the Panama Papers information leaks.

The thing is that it is not as though the police investigated the evidence that was published and reached the educated conclusion that there are no charges to press. Instead, it has, prima facie, decided that there is no reasonable suspicion of any wrongdoing and that it will, as such, not even investigate anything.

In fact, it seems, not even a single individual is to be investigated of the police’s own accord, although this does not mean that if another authority is, indeed, investigating the Panama Papers leaks that a police investigation may eventually be undertaken.

This leaves everyone in a somewhat peculiar position, and by everyone we refer to the general population – the electorate – which had by and large recoiled in disgust at the Panamagate revelations.

But with the police seemingly unwilling to look into the Panama Papers for possible wrongdoing, what else is there to be done? We should eventually have the results of Dr Mizzi’s long-awaited audits, which he apparently ordered back in February. One should not, however, hold their breath for anything salient to emerge from those quarters, for a number of reasons. Those audits must certainly have been completed by now and while assuming there is nothing criminal uncovered by those audits, given the blanket secrecy applied to such matters by the Panamanian fiscal jurisdiction, the government’s thinking must be that it is best to just let sleeping dogs lie and not stir the placid waters of summer by publishing those audits as promised.

Now there will be the European Parliament’s Panama Papers committee, which will seek to interview Dr Mizzi at some point over the next year. That Committee’s task will be to investigate alleged contraventions and maladministration in the application of Union law in relation to money laundering and tax avoidance and tax evasion. It will also look into how the current EU legislative framework is vulnerable to abuse and that persons in positions of power have used loopholes to circumvent the safeguards put in place – particularly those relating to anti-money laundering laws.

What that will amount to as regards the situation of Malta, which had the unenviable accolade of having the only currently serving European minister to have been named in the Panama Papers, is questionable.

All told, the way the government handled the whole Panamagate affair was a textbook case of burying one’s head in the sand until the storm blows over – to make some cosmetic moves, appear concerned about the situation but, in reality, to ignore it altogether until public interest dies out and it simply goes away.

What is most troubling about the whole affair is that the government failed a huge test in its accountability pledge, and no one even appears to have noticed. If there had been any will at all on the part of the government to tackle the abuses uncovered by the Panama Papers, there were plenty of ways in which it could have done just that.  But as we know by now, there was never any such will – only the will to close ranks, keep as quiet as possible and wait out the storm.