It is perhaps a sign of the times. The largest Cabinet in Maltese history has so many members that on a normal day they hardly find anything to do.

So once they heard that a Court of Appeal was due to hear an Appeal from a judgement regarding the vexed question of the counting hall and two extra seats that were allotted to PL, no less than 10 ministers trooped to Court to follow the proceedings.

The Courts of Law are a public space and any citizen can enter and follow the proceedings, unless other reasons impede this. So the ministers, as citizens, had every right to go and follow the proceedings, even if only two of them were directly impacted by the case.

But apart from being citizens they are also Ministers, members of Cabinet. And one of them is the Minister of Justice, who recommends who is to be made a magistrate, a judge, a Chief Justice. His presence in Court, an absolutely unprecedented event, was completely ill-judged. And the collective presence of more than half the Cabinet could be interpreted as putting pressure on the three judges sitting on the appeal.

This is not the first time that Minister Owen Bonnici, who comes across in Parliament as the voice of reason, has sailed close to the legal wind. He was accused of infringing the Constitution – something he denied doing – when he appointed two persons as magistrates ending with one of them dropping out.

The case itself is a mess, showing how Malta’s electoral process can be undermined and turned into a farce.

There is on the one hand the proportion of votes obtained by PL and obtained by PN. There is on the other hand, the number of seats assigned to each party.

The court case found that PN had been underassigned two seats but did not say those two seats are to be taken from the government side. But would a PN+2 reflect the amount of votes PN obtained? And would the consequent lesser proportion be just to those who voted PL?

The last thing the three judges needed while pondering on this conundrum is the massive presence of half the Cabinet sitting in Court.

Will this now produce a roomful of Shadow Cabinet members the next time the Court of Appeal convenes?

And if the ministers have time on their hands, apart from concentrating on their ministerial roles, that is, there are, we are sure, a myriad jobs they can do, if they really want to help the country.

It is enough to have a look on their faces as they trooped out of Court, like schoolboys let out of school, to show they all took it like a bravata. A children’s bravata.