The summer heat is on and we need to take a breather every so often. Getting away from the usual problems, enjoying some ħobż biż-żejt over a beer and a dip in the deep blue sea that surrounds us is what the season is all about. Strolling, let alone exercising strenuously, is hardly possible in these months of summer.

Being outdoors during the day obviously calls for a hat to protect you from the sun’s rays. A panama hat is ideal, and this is where the detritus hits the proverbial fan.

The Panama saga has been consigned to the back pages or beyond. In Malta, as in every other country in the world, people get bored of old stories. A subject is only exciting till it bleeds blood. When anything – from a tragedy to a weird story – becomes old hat it stops being mentioned. It loses its appeal, its readability.

Thank God for that. Otherwise we would never stop speaking about the same boring subjects.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, and especially his two close collaborators who had secret companies and funds and accounts in Panama and other shady places, all thank God and the media of the world for moving on and finding new subjects to discuss.

Summer heat, sunstrokes, football, Brexit, tragedies in Iraq and Dhaka all made for better newsworthiness. And, just as Café Premier, Michael Falzon and Gaffarena have been forgotten, the doings of the minister and the top official no longer instigate talk, wonder and horror.

This is the way of the world and no one, no Simon Busuttil, no political guru, will ever be able to change that.

But if forgotten, or distant, have the hurt, the political fallout, the horror, been forgiven? Is it fine now, a few months after the revelations that Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi did what they did, for them to carry on in power, still orchestrating all on behalf of the Prime Minister?

Losing faith in politics is something scary and this is what the Panama Papers did

Time heals – but in this case it has healed nothing. Time and circumstance, which always seem to favour the Prime Minister, might have helped us sweep all the ills of the country aside but healed they surely haven’t.

The worst thing about all this is not the actual actions of the two functionaries who were going to – or who did – move around illicitly gained money. That was an act of horror – even if just the intent of it – that is hard to beat.

But the worst thing that has happened in all this is the erosion of faith in politicians, in truly honest politics, in good governance. Losing faith in politics is something scary and this is what the Panama Papers did: they convinced people that politicians are all corrupt, so who cares about politics?

That Muscat defended blindly what seemed and sounded indefensible will long haunt the country. That he, after long agonising months, only seemingly demoted the minister, was not enough. That he didn’t even criticise or admonish his head of staff, citing the banal excuse that he was always in business and was not voted into his position, were choices by the Prime Minister that weigh heavily on all the political class.

Further analysis of the Panama Papers debacle makes you weep. The Labour Party promised that everyone would be accountable, all would be transparent.

That politicians promise more than they can deliver has almost become expected, as there is a huge gulf between promises and reality; but promising mountains and giving nothing makes you a liar and a fraud.

Politicians of every hue need to pay better attention to the harm that is being wrought on society. Talk is easy but action is what will be long remembered.

In this case, because Muscat and his government believe only in spin, in empty talk, in accusing the Nationalist Party of all ills and wrongdoing, the real loser will never be the Labour Party. It will be – or rather it is already – Malta and the terrible name that is being stamped on both politics and politicians.

The heat is on and hopefully the heat will be back even in politics: hopefully all those who err will be made accountable and everyone who defends wrong will be exiled from positions of power.

It is only the voters who can do this and, hopefully, they will rise to the occasion and decide to sweep the wrongdoers aside.

Mario Rizzo Naudi is a Nationalist Party election candidate.