One can almost imagine the conversation the Prime Minister had with the Home Affairs Minister last Sunday morning, on the phone or in person.

"We have a problem," Byron Camilleri must have started. "Some 200 kilogrammes of cannabis resin have been stolen from AFM grounds in Safi. What shall we do?"

"Don't worry, Byron," Robert Abela must have answered. "Let's suspend the brigadier to appear to be doing something. And to shut the PN's mouth offer me your resignation, which I will refuse. And then we continue as if nothing happened."

It would certainly sound better in Maltese, and it's probable that the exchange lasted longer than that as the plan was formulated. But that is the gist of what must have gone on between the two of them last Sunday.

Abela insists that Camilleri is a person of integrity, is serious in his work, and has always performed his duties in a professional manner.

But a politician must also shoulder the responsibility for failures within his portfolio.

And Camilleri does not have a good track record in this respect. Last year, the government's identity cards agency, which falls in his remit, was involved in an ID card scandal which is still reverberating to this day. Earlier this year, a report by the Ombudsman exposed all that went on at the prison a few years ago - when Camilleri was defending the way the system operated there. Both occasions were shameful episodes that embarrassed the government, but Camilleri resisted calls for his resignation with the backing of Abela.

The police, which are also part of his responsibility, have often been under fire for their shortcomings, particularly related to cases linked with people which were part of the government or were close to it. Camilleri ploughed on.

The heist from the AFM compound last Sunday was the cherry on the cake and, this time, we were told that Camilleri did offer to quit but the Prime Minister refused to let him go.

But the argument we make is this: If the Armed Forces of Malta commander, Brigadier Clinton O'Neill, was suspended, it means that Abela and Camilleri, together, thought that the incident was serious enough to warrant disciplinary action against the AFM chief. So if the incident was so serious to temporarily remove the AFM chief, it should follow that Camilleri steps aside and take political responsibility for what happened.

And while any calls from the Nationalist Party and others for Camilleri to quit or be removed may be seen as partisan or an attempt to take political advantage, the same cannot be said when someone like former Labour Prime Minister Alfred Sant is of the same opinion.

"Camilleri did well to offer his resignation following the theft of cannabis from an Army depot. Perhaps it would have been better had he resigned," he wrote in The Malta Independent last Thursday.

"A politician in charge is responsible both for what he does and for what those who in his name exercise public service roles of a decisional and managerial nature do. If they mess up, he/she is equally involved," Sant wrote.

In other words, Sant is implying that if he had been Prime Minister, he would have accepted Camilleri's offer to resign.

But, as things happened, Camilleri's offer and the PM's refusal to accept it was just a charade, which continued on Tuesday when the Cabinet of Ministers expressed its full confidence in the Prime Minister's decision to keep Camilleri, and Camilleri's competence as a minister.

Sant himself reminded us of the "fun" Labour had when former Nationalist Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami had offered to resign after he had been censured by the Law Courts, knowing that he (Fenech Adami) would be asked to continue.

The same happened last Sunday, this time on the Labour side of the fence.

And, to use Sant's words, when such incidents continue to be tolerated or ignored, there is a "significant relaxation of the seriousness, discipline and accountability that the public sector needs to maintain in order to carry out its duties properly."

Because the buck stops with Camilleri.

He is politically responsible for the Armed Forces of Malta, and he should therefore have been man enough to not only offer to resign, but to really resign, irrespective of what the Prime Minister thinks.

In the same way that Chris Fearne did last year following his arraignment in connection with the hospitals' magisterial inquiry. That time, Abela had asked Fearne to reconsider, but Fearne would not budge. Fearne said he wanted to quit, and he resigned, throwing the PM's call to reconsider back to his face.

Camilleri should have handed in his resignation and left.

He would have earned more respect.