Where to begin? The tunnel might be a good start. Every nation has a tunnel story which is forever immortalised in the nation’s collective psyche. France has the Pont de l’Alma in Paris, where Princess Diana’s life came to a tragic end.

In a country like Malta, where the streets have far too many names, it seems odd, even surprising, that our tunnels have none. That alone can fuel road-rage, sending you into a flurry of racist obscenities.

In many ways, the Paul Sheehan saga has highlighted everything that is wrong, not with our tunnels, but with a police force which is manifestly petrifying on so many levels – the thugs in uniform and those who wouldn’t be able to locate a tunnel if it hit them in the face.

What happened on November 19 and weeks following has merely underscored something which has always existed – which predates this government and the one before it. And which, I fear, will continue to exist unless this country is changed from the inside out.

Had Sheehan not been the minister’s driver and a police officer on the beat instead, sooner or later someone, somewhere, would have got the short end of his fuse. With the difference that it would never have become news. The worrying part: there are plenty more ‘Sheehans’ who are not politically affiliated to the PL.

Had the Nationalist media gone on the offensive in 2012, perhaps today we’d know what happened to Mamadou Kamara, who died while in Armed Forces custody. I wonder why the media didn’t go hysterical and demand answers then? There were no warning shots for Kamara – he was dead long before Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi ordered the inquiry into his death. There were no resignations either. Two years later, the findings of that inquiry have yet to be published.

The only reason the Nationalist media wouldn’t let up this time is because they immediately saw a political booby-trap. It would have been far better for justice had Kamara been mortally wounded by someone with a direct link to a PL minister. The fact that he was allegedly beaten to death by three officers, while trying to escape detention, was obviously not as important as a car chase involving a PL ministerial car, a broken mirror and a couple of gun shots.

The latter, I am now convinced, were fuelled by off-the-charts ineptitude, institutionalised police arrogance, personality issues and the frenetic frustration Sheehan must have felt when it suddenly occurred to him that he was not getting instant gratification.

You’ll have to listen to the recordings to understand what I’m talking about. Many are riddled with untruths and exaggerations perpetrated deliberately by Sheehan in an attempt to pull rank.

Any ordinary citizen who has ever needed police assistance will immediately identify with the feeling of having to over-dramatise to get a modicum of attention. You call the depot expecting instant sympathy, solace and help. Instead, you are left waiting interminably, cut off or otherwise told that no, you can’t possibly make a report over the telephone.

There are plenty more ‘Sheehans’ who are not politically affiliated to the PL

It’s maddening – a joyless, painful exercise, guaranteed to make you want to put a gun to your head or shoot the nearest identifiable object. You are dealing with colossally clueless, lazy people who seem to derive great pleasure from ensuring you don’t get relief; who fail to understand that sometimes you simply aren’t in a position to go to the nearest police station.

Much of what was said by Sheehan in that first phone-call was said for effect – his claim that the minister’s car was totalled (untrue), that the minister was with him (untrue) that the minister’s daughter was with him (untrue). He overplayed the incident, perhaps hoping to guarantee the presence of the Rapid Intervention Unit, until then conspicuous by its absence.

I rather suspect this inertia further enraged him, and the shots he fired while still on the telephone and the very loud declaration that he would ‘unload’ the gun onto Smith, were also sheer manic bravado – his final desperate attempt to elicit a reaction at the other end of the line.

Whatever the reason or rhyme, it was horribly inexcusable. A frightening overreaction and disproportionate response unworthy of any police officer. Police officers derive their power from the law, not from a can of Red Bull.

In the meantime, the Police were working their magic, doing what they do best – colluding, protecting and serving their own, not the country. For all Sheehan’s unhinged protests that he had shot at Smith twice, then Acting Commissioner Ray Zammit chose to call these ‘warning shots’. How interesting that while Sheehan was doing his damndest to portray himself as a loose cannon, Zammit exercised immediate damage control, resorting to euphemisms which did not reflect the whole truth – or at least not what Sheehan had said. Fascinating.

And while this might read like a wholesale indictment of the Police, had we a trustworthy, serious, no-nonsense police force which drew a line over which no one could cross (and that includes any government, the Attorney General et al), Mallia would still be a minister today.

Despite the untruths, euphe-misms, tampering with evidence and the close proximity to the powers that be, remarkably there are those who claim that establishing the facts through an independent inquiry was a waste of time. Oh well...

Never mind that the inquiry was concluded in record time and Joseph Muscat has effectively gone where no other Prime Minister has gone before, effectively bringing about the resignation of one of his topmost ministers.

He may have been bowing to pressure, but he saw a principle at stake on which he was not ready to compromise. Muscat is clearly very much in control and has done the unthinkable – the one thing the Opposition were secretly banking on him not doing.

In so doing, he has snatched the carpet from under their feet and taken away their ‘whipping boy’.

Muscat is the only one calling the warning shots here.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com