How many damning indictments does the government need to receive from its European peers before it finally, to use the Prime Minister’s own words from the very early days of his tenure, wakes up and smells the coffee?

The government is being very slowly cornered by a situation of its own making, cornered by its European colleagues on almost every level, apart from at European Council level, which is a good thing for the Prime Minister because, as he has said, he only listens to Prime Ministers.

That is indeed a pity, or a sorry excuse, because at the end of the day all Prime Minister listen to their electorates. And as such, is it perhaps only a matter of time before those Prime Ministers begin relaying the thoughts of their own populaces.

And that is more a matter of when rather than if. The bad international press Malta has been garnering throughout the EU over recent years will eventually reach a critical mass and at that point, push will come to shove.

The latest damning indictment from our European neighbours came from the Greek courts this week when a request by the Maltese courts, through a European Arrest Warrant, was turned down – because of fears for the subject’s safety, her right to a fair trial and concerns about the rule of law in our country.

If that is not a slap on the face, we do not know what is. That decision, whether right or wrong, is a clear sign that the country has, and is still, suffering reputational damage on a massive scale.

The Prime Minister, however, has shrugged off this latest episode like water off a duck’s back. In his somewhat strange opinion, the fact that the request and the ruling were not at governmental level but, rather, on a judicial level, makes it all right.

Come again? That is the Prime Minister once again saying he only listens to Prime Ministers. Last time it was MEPs who he did not listen to, this time it is the courts.

This, however, was merely the latest episode in a sorry sequence of events. The government’s reputation has been tarnished from the moment that Malta and the rest of the world came to know that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff and his star minister had set up secret and suspicious companies in Panama and accompanying trusts in New Zealand on being elected to office.

It was from that moment on that the eyes of the world were diverted to miniscule Malta and its government. That reputation was tarnished further when the Prime Minister abjectly failed to take any sort of action against the offending pair. And it was tarnished further still when one of the leading critics of those financial misadventures was so brutally assassinated.

Europe’s eyes are indeed on Malta. There is concern that the government’s Individual Investor Programme has opened the floodgates for persons unknown to become European citizens and to move and settle freely within the bloc.

There is concern that the government is passively or actively allowing money to be laundered into Europe and there is concern that a European government is turning a blind eye on corruption within its ranks. 

There is concern that certain entities are threatening to silence a European nation’s media at large with the threat of financially crippling SLAPP lawsuits.

There is concern that the problem with the rule of law in Malta is down to the government’s rampant abuse of its power – from failing to prosecute or even investigate the multiple misdeeds perpetrated by members of the government, to castrating the institutions that are meant to protect citizens’ rights and uphold the laws of the land, and to the way in which basic democratic principles are ignored left right and centre.

All these concerns are mounting and growing in a situation that is quite beyond the government’s control. The best it can do short of taking any real action is to bury its head in the sand, which it has done, instead of taking any kind of remedial action to address this rapidly degenerating situation.

As for such remedial action, there are several avenues open to the government. But what would make a really good starting point would be to being addressing the problem from its root: by sacking Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi, the genesis of the cesspool in which we as a country have found ourselves.

But somehow, we do not believe this is any kind of option for a Prime Minister who appears to care more for his inner circle than for the national interest.