I watched the rule-of-law-in-Malta debate in the European Parliament yesterday, and I blushed for Malta.

When did it become normal for us to have a prime minister who lies through the back teeth and who, apart from a few random flushes and some fidgeting with his phone, showed absolutely no shame or embarrassment about his brass-necked lies but only awkwardness at having to be there in the first place, fielding questions that he has been determined to avoid back home?

It was his voice, on a rising octave that couldn’t have been more different to the rehearsed stentorian tones he uses for party political meetings in Malta, and a whole lot closer to the old voice some of us remember from the days when he worked for the Labour Party’s television station and squawked all over press conferences, that gave his discomfort away.

There were general lies about the institutions and the separation of powers in Malta. Muscat described the institutions, which sound great on paper, but failed to mention that none of them are able to function properly because he has removed key people, replaced them with lackeys and stooges, and suffocated the prospect of any initiative.

And then there were the more frightening – because they are clear and obvious lies about indisputable facts – specific lies about what is being done to investigate the issues raised by the Panama Papers. His voice rising to its highest note, Muscat said: “There are four judicial inquiries. When you say that nothing is being done, you are picking up lies from social media.” None of those judicial inquiries involves Konrad Mizzi in any capacity or context.

Two of them involve Keith Schembri, yes, but they have nothing whatsoever to do with his Panama company and New Zealand trust. Nor were they triggered by the state institutions working as they should. On the contrary, those two judicial inquiries are the result of the state institutions having failed shockingly. They are inquiries into two reports, the results of investigations by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, into Keith Schembri’s money-laundering activities with Adrian Hillman, who was then managing director of The Times of Malta and The Sunday Times, and suspected kickbacks Schembri took from the accountant Brian Tonna on the sale of Maltese citizenship to some Russian people. The FIAU handed the reports to the police, the police sat on them and refused to act, and somebody – whether it was from the FIAU or the police remains unclear – in frustration at this injustice leaked those reports to the media and/or the Opposition, who then handed them in to a magistrate, triggering the inquiries.

The third inquiry has nothing whatsoever to do with Panama, offshore accounts or companies, Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri or Joseph Muscat. It is an inquiry carried out at the request of Pilatus Bank, which demands to know how a report about its methods and processes, prepared by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, ended up leaked to the press. And the fourth inquiry, as everybody knows by now because he goes on about it relentlessly, is the original one, into the ownership of Egrant Inc, the Panama company set up in tandem with the other two Panama companies which are owned by Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri.

At one point, Muscat’s lies were so outrageous that somebody could be heard calling from the MEPs’ seats, accusing him of lying. It must have been Werner Langen, the chairman of the European Parliament’s anti-money-laundering (PANA) Committee, because Muscat broke off to obfuscate whatever was being called out in his direction by saying loudly, “I didn’t interrupt you, Mr Langen, so now don’t interrupt me.” At that point, Mr Langen walked out.

Earlier, he  had spoken in extremely angry tones, expressing his dismay that the Prime Minister of a European Union member state would treat the European Parliament with such contempt by refusing to appear before its anti-money-laundering committee himself, and not ordering his chief of staff, who had been avoiding them, to appear too.  “You are not going to get away with it,” he said. Another member of that committee, Dariusz Rosiati, was even firmer and clearer, saying that the Maltese prime minister and his chief of staff had refused to appear before it to answer questions, and that Konrad Mizzi had done so, “but he failed to convince us that he is innocent”. Another speaker told Muscat: “Elections do not replace investigations”.

It was ghastly and awkward, and I couldn’t help thinking of Muscat’s loud boast, immediately after his victory in the general election, that he would now go overseas to “defend Malta’s reputation abroad”. That is what he told his supporters at a mass meeting, because that is where his main concern lies: the domestic context. Yet he and his cohorts are the direct cause of Malta’s deteriorating reputation, and the tensions at yesterday afternoon’s session in Strasbourg could not have made this clearer.