What’s the difference between Godfrey Farrugia and Manuel Mallia? Both have been ministers in the Muscat government. Both were appointed at the same time. However, one was dropped like a stone over a perceived failure to deliver while the other has been granted more lives than the most Houdini-like of cats.

The burning question is, why?

Dr Mallia earned a sterling reputation as a criminal lawyer. Whether everyone loved his style is open to discussion. What is not open to discussion, however, is that he has failed to bring the right attributes to the political table – where he has often come across as belligerent and more than a little detached.

Wherever he has gone, controversy has had a most unfortunate habit of following closely behind: from the €500,000 in cash he just happened to leave around his home (as one does) to the ill-advised visit to Corradino Correctional Facility where he was cheered by inmates, as well as several other incidents.

He has argued that there is nothing wrong with a Home Affairs Minister being accompanied by armed security men. Given the welcome he had been given at Corradino, one may indeed wonder whether he is joking. But beyond this flippancy, there are two more pertinent points:

One, he has taken the ridiculous decision to make use of police outriders – who were embarrassingly put into effect as his official car barged through the traffic while it made his way to Lino Spiteri’s funeral in Mdina last week. This shows a propensity to abuse power.

Two, the comparisons he has drawn with others who have had a security detail are more than a little odious. Richard Cachia Caruana had been stabbed in the back with a long knife as he went about his duty very close to 20 years ago while President Emeritus Eddie Fenech Adami – who was subjected to countless threats and had his wife beaten, his children terrorised and his home ransacked to boot – is hardly in the same category as a relatively new minister.

Be that as it may, it is not even the issue here. The biggest issue is not even the incident that concerned his security detail, who fired two shots as he gave chase to a man in a car which clipped the wing mirror of the minister’s vehicle. Not even, as serious as the allegation may be, that there was an attempt to cover up this hideous incident or at the very least to present a much more favourable version of it.

The singular issue is that since Dr Mallia was assigned responsibility for the police force – along with his chief of staff, Silvio Scerri, who has been accused at various levels of exerting undue influence – the public has lost confidence in its integrity, its honesty and also its ability to function as an independent body.

This reality makes the defence of Dr Mallia by the Prime Minister – whose primary duty it is to uphold law and order in the country and ensure there is public confidence in this vital mechanism – all the more perplexing.

Could it be that, notwithstanding a nine-seat majority in Parliament, Joseph Muscat cannot exercise control over this very important portfolio? Could it be that, because Dr Mallia switched sides, the Prime Minister does not feel he can interfere?

Or could it be something bigger than all of this which we are not at liberty to know or understand?

Whatever the case, the Prime Minister is failing by the day in allowing this intolerable situation to continue.