That interview with the Prime Minister last week on PBS’s Dissett may have well ended after the first five minutes. In his opening volley, journalist Reno Bugeja asked Joseph Muscat what he had to say about the controversies over his Home Affairs Minister, his Equal Opportunities Minister, his Economy Minister and his MP Luciano Busuttil. Muscat mumbled something to the effect that the issues are different and then said: “What people care about is what affects their pockets.”

That really gave the game away of how Muscat thinks and the programme could have stopped there. Muscat answered nothing of what Bugeja, and many viewers, wanted to know.

He genuinely does not think people care and he couldn’t be bothered with answering what Bugeja called “auto-goals”.

We can only hope he is wrong about what people care about, although, given Muscat’s astounding electoral successes, the nagging fear is he may be right.

People may not care for the degenerate and indecent way this country is being run so long as it does not affect their pockets.

A Malta Today survey said just 39 per cent of respondents think that the Home Affairs Minister should go. That is a shockingly low figure and does not reflect well on the political culture in this country.

Labour and its cronies are taking the lion’s share in a no-holds barred free for all, knowing they can placate the electorate with measly Budget handouts. People truly get the government they deserve.

That’s why Muscat could tell Bugeja, with a straight face, that: the government’s contract with Electrogas will be published “at the opportune moment”; that a code of ethics will be published “soon”; that his secret agreement with Henley & Partners could not be published because of a legal wrangle; and that a decision on the Acting Police Commissioner will be taken “at the right moment”.

He answered absolutely nothing in the belief there will no political flak.

At the end of that interview, Bugeja must have stood up and walked off with his head held high, knowing he had done his duty.

Muscat must have left the studio grinning, knowing he had slimed his way through, again. Successfully.

The key issue throughout that interview, and in the national debate that has overshadowed the government’s Budget, is ethics, values and political responsibility.

Muscat’s defence of Equality Minister Helena Dalli’s position with regard to a farmhouse she owns with her husband is that her position is “legally correct”.

That is absolutely irrelevant. In public life, it is not what you can get away with legally that counts but in doing what is right. Muscat does not see that.

That shambles of a planning authority came out with a statement last weekend saying that the enforcement notice (an infringement) issued on the Dalli’s farmhouse had not been, well, how can we put it, infringed.

At the risk of being challenged to a TV duel, Mintoffian style, by the minister’s husband, I would venture to say that the Mepa statement was not issued in defence of the Dallis but in defence of the commission that now has to determine whether to sanction or not an illegal building outside the development zone belonging to a minister. That commission should never have been put in this politically-charged situation.

Dalli may storm off as much as she wants when she sees the press and play the aloof Marie Antoinette: she is still politically accountable for what happened at that farmhouse.

Astoundingly, Muscat put up a similar defence when asked on private property being used as Labour Party clubs.

He said: “We are legally correct.” Yes, so probably was the Dom Mintoff he imitates so much when he confiscated those properties. It was and still is morally wrong.

Just because you can get away with it, does not make it right. Muscat’s thinking reflects that terrible trait in Maltese mentality that, so long as you can get away with it, then it must be good.

Take a walk in our disintegrating countryside and see what people got away with and now think they stand in the right.

Just because you can get away with it, does not make it right. Muscat’s thinking reflects that trait

Try Armier for starters, a wholly illegal town supplied with water and electricity by a Labour government that thinks exactly like the squatters there: if you can get away with it, then it is your right.

It is exactly that same mentality that prompted Labour in government to start selling EU passports, to our great national shame. They saw they could get away with it and went for it.

Muscat told Bugeja he was proud to be globetrotting across continents to sell EU passports for Henley & Partners.

It was a pertinent point Bugeja made: why is it that Henley is coming out with the sales figures and not the Maltese government? Why does the government keep it all secret and let Henley use Malta for its marketing ploys? “Who’s benefiting from all this,” retorted Muscat. Does this man know he is abdicating national sovereignty to a private company?

Asked why he does not investigate his ministers, Muscat’s flippant reply was that “he was no Sherlock Holmes”. He said he neither had the power nor the resources, to investigate “personally”.

He is the most powerful man in the country. Only he can ensure the political accountability of his ministers but he abdicates that responsibility. The result is a moral degradation of the political culture and the price this country is paying, and shall pay, will be high.

Appointing three retired judges to investigate the political accountability of Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia in a shooting case involving his driver is perverse. It is absolutely irrelevant whether they conclude that Mallia was involved in a scandal that saw the government’s Department of Information coming out with a statement to cover up what the police themselves now describe as an attempted murder.

The man involved is Mallia’s driver. In reality, the cover-up is irrelevant and none of the damning details that keep coming out over this case are of any importance.

Mallia is politically responsible for the antics of his driver and Muscat should have fired him immediately.

His grandstanding on Sunday, where he said he would not shy away from taking decisions, counts for nothing.

He should already have taken the decision to sack Mallia and it is tragic that the Prime Minister fails to see this.

The responsibility lies on his shoulders but he shrugs it off. He is letting the country down, betraying the many people that showed so much trust in him because they wanted change. They wanted exactly the opposite of what is happening under Labour, not even two years in government.

Muscat has been playing the great and wonderful Wizard of Oz for far too long. The economy is working in his favour. He wants everyone to ignore these scandals and look at what is left in their pockets.

He appeals to myopic selfishness but no one with any sense of propriety is looking at his Budget full of handouts. To Muscat’s great disappointment, no one is looking at that Budget except for Brussels and then for all the wrong reasons.

In that astounding 1939 film Wizard of Oz, the fake wizard recognised three virtues in the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Lion: a heart, a brain and courage.

There is no reason to think that Muscat does not have a heart and, as for brain, he is immensely clever. But he lacks the courage. Courage comes from political values and in doing what is right.

In finding out that the wizard is a fraud, Dorothy exclaims: “Oh, you’re a very bad man!” The wizard’s reply was: “Oh, no my dear. I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad wizard.”

Clearly, Muscat is a bad wizard because, all around him, the dream he built is falling apart. If he does not run the gauntlet and surrender Mallia, whatever the political price, he runs the risk of becoming a bad man too.

This is a moral issue.