Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and former parliamentary secretary Michael Falzon speaking to the press on Wednesday. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

The National Audit Office has concluded that the Gaffarena deals – there were two apparently – on those Valletta properties were the result of collusion. Responsibility was heaped on the officials at the Land Department, together with outgoing parliamentary secretary Michael Falzon, who resigned, in the view of many something on the lines of eight months too late.

Political responsibility lies, pretty darn obviously, with Premier Joseph Muscat, both as a result of his prime ministerial position and also as a result of his ministerial position, given that the Land Department, along with Mepa, were assigned to him, by him, just after he scuttled up the stairs to Castille back in 2013.

Just after “we, the people” (not me, but you know what I mean) had voted him in on a promise of his government going to be the cleanest we have ever seen with the best Cabinet ever, please remember. The best Cabinet, that is, at losing its members and having others classified as being devious, to say nothing of inept and borderline corrupt in some cases.

Precisely why Premier Muscat decided to keep Mepa and the Land Department under his clutches wasn’t clear at the time but a number of commentators have started to put one and one together and come up with an answer that equals two, coincidentally the same number of sides to a deal.

Falzon must be feeling hard done by: he had to fall on his sword, albeit reluctantly (at least he didn’t have to suffer the ignominy of being fired, like Manuel Mallia) even if that sword was handed over to him by somebody else.

What Premier Muscat must have meant was that the electorate does not expect to hold his party to any standards at all

And then Premier Muscat was headlined as saying that the populace at large holds his party to a higher standard of behaviour than that to which the Nationalists are held.

I do believe he said this with a straight face, which means that he’s either a superb actor (in which case, there’s no way I’m ever going to play poker with him) or else he really believes what he was saying.

That Premier Muscat is not a superb actor, on the showing of his partisan and shambolic, if slick and glitzy, New Year’s message, is quite clear. The problem therefore arises: given that the dear chap is not among the dumbest of bears, in fact he is the proud holder of at least two or three degrees, how could someone so intelligent believe that the electorate really and truly holds him and his party to a higher standard of behaviour than that to which the Nationalists were – and remain – held?

Bear in mind that this is the party in government, led by the aforementioned Premier Muscat that forked over many millions of our hard-earned euros to the owners of the Café Premier to help them out of their financial embarrassment. This is the party in government, led by Premier Muscat, that pays many euros to his spouse to run her car and many thousands of our hard-earned euros to the spouse of a Cabinet minister so she can live happily in her homeland, China, while insouciantly inviting us to “judge her on her achievements”.

Fine, Ms Mizzi Lang, let’s do that little thing: you have achieved the sum total of sweet nothing, therefore you have to be adjudged to be worth pretty much thesame. But you’re paid many thousands of euros more than that.

This is the party in government, led by Premier Muscat that is presiding over an environmental disaster the magnitude of which should lead to a run on megaphones, protests in the streets and general weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of the usual suspects.

Instead, the developers crow about making hay while the sun shines while the President of the Republic’s Office doesn’t have the basic good sense to steer the President away from association with these people and with the Ċaqnus of this world.

This is the party in government, as you’ve already read, led by Premier Muscat within which a parliamentary secretary (proud owner of a golden Bank of Valletta parachute, incidentally) within Premier Muscat’s own ministry, to boot, has been found by the National Audit Office to have failed to protect the national interest when one Mark Gaffarena was given a rather sweet pair of deals, probably as part of a matching set with his petrol station in Qormi.

This bunch of clowns, not to say worse,are held to a higher standard by the electorate, Premier Muscat has the brass neck to say. Seriously?

The tragedy is, he probably does believe it because, notwithstanding his towering IQ and equally prodigious “street-smarts”, he seems to lack that essential strand of self-awareness or humility that would normally prompt him towards some self-restraint, some respect for the conventions that we run our lives by.

The supreme irony is that even though it is manifestly clear that Premier Joe and his merry men have embarked on a charge to the bottom that is faster than we could have dreamt, there are still people who make excuses for them, in a sense, by tarring all politicians with the same brush.

I’m not talking about the Cyrus Engerers or Pullicino Orlandos of this world, whose mission in life seems to be to put up increasingly ludicrous defences for every excess of their hero, Premier Muscat, but about components of the media who still, even three years down the line, haven’t got themselves fully free of the urge to beat the Nationalists about the head at every opportunity. That particular worm is turning, though, and Premier Joe is starting to feel the truth of the maxim that “the media giveth, and the media taketh away, blessed be the media”.

What Premier Muscat must have meant when he said that the electorate holds his party to a higher standard was that the electorate does not expect to hold his party to any standards at all.

I wanted, before the news of confirmation of Premier Joe’s collusive and conspiratorial style of government broke, to express solidarity with Daphne Caruana Galizia as legal beagles representing Konrad Mizzi seek to deprive her of one of the very few privileges journalists have. It can be taken as a given, journalists are starting to find, that when Labour is in government, the Fourth Estate finds itself being bullied, it was ever thus.

I wanted, too, to ask the people who inexplicably (in some cases, in others I’m not surprised) chose to sit at the same table as that Franco Debono person, politely, not to mess with the Constitution, except perhaps to tweak it slightly.

Instead, why don’t you use your prodigious talents, those of you who have them, that is, to remind Premier Muscat constantly that the Constitution isn’t just the paper one at the beginning of the rule book but it is the set of conventions, many undefinable, by which a country, governed under the rule of law, runs itself and that he needs to start respecting them?

On a much more pleasant note, we had dinner on Tuesday at the Fork & Cork on Saqqajja Hill. All I can say is that it was so darn good that we tried to book for Sunday lunch and that we almost burst into tears when the chef patron told us they don’t open on Sundays, which is eminently sensible of them, if disappointing for us.

Like Arnie, we’ll be beck.