I must admit that there seemed to be an uncanny connection between my musings about aestivation last week and the Prime Minister’s blanket e-mail exhorting us to relax and enjoy the summer while assuring us that we are indeed in safe hands etc.

Maybe we should dispense with politics altogether?- Kenneth Zammit Tabona

I am sure you will agree that this legislature has turned out to be unusual to say the least; a harnessing of very professional administration to a team of horses that had minds of their own and which insisted on pulling in different directions. What we all suspected after the 2008 election was freely admitted when, in this last month, the proverbial merde really hit the fan regarding Mistragate and its consequences and high-powered Nationalist Party officials made public what really happened in those confusing and fraught pre-election days, perversely vindicating Alfred Sant in the process.

This is the sort of behaviour that, in days and weeks to come, far from inducing relaxation, as exhorted by the Prime Minister, will further exacerbate the confusing situation faced by the floating voters. Please do keep in mind that I mean no disrespect to the floating voters; quite the opposite, in fact.

In my humble opinion, a floater in the true sense is a voter who uses his head and votes for a party that he honestly believes is in the country’s best interests. A voter who is not blinded by party brain(hog)wash and one who is repelled by the way a great many of us think that political adherence is rather like a fanatical backing a football team with all the foolishness and illogicality that goes with it.

Perhaps the earliest indicator that GonziPN was going to come to a sticky end was the amount of time it took in 2008 to form a Cabinet.

Now that events have revealed themselves to us we can well understand the quandary that poor Lawrence Gonzi found himself in when faced with the very real problem of what to do with elected MPs who had either blotted their copybook or were plain untrustworthy.

We all know what happened; a rapidly deteriorating political party torn asunder from within hanging on to a government by the skin of its teeth and now subject to the whims of the very MP, who, with some help from his friends, has all but destroyed the party he professed, hand on heart, that he loved.

Yes; I have said it before and I will say it again: revenge is a dish best eaten cold. What I cannot understand is how the Prime Minister treats this humongous humiliation, not only of himself, but the government and the party too, with almost divine equanimity when, in fact, he should be seething inside.

Thank God, I am not a politico. The more I study this absurdly strange species the more I think that there must be something not quite human about them. What goes on within the hallowed walls of the House of Representatives seems to have little or no relation to what the reality of the situation dictates.

Extra-parliamentary business-like civil wars on our doorstep, EU financial collapse and other minor inconveniences seem to be successfully taken in our stride. It is the politics of the government and not its administrative ability that is in utter shambles, which brings me to conclude that what the party does politically is of no importance at all and that even a so-called coalition with a questionable MP like Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando can actually work much as, on paper, real PN diehards must hate the very idea. Maybe we should dispense with politics altogether?

On the other hand, we have elections within a year at most and are faced with an opposition which is as uncertain as we all are about the political efficaciousness of taking over a government that is capable of such splendiferous whitewashing campaigns and being faced with a catastrophic financial Black Hole of Calcutta, which would render any incoming government incapable of keeping any electoral promise it may have been foolish enough to make.

The outstanding proof of this is the reneging of the present legislature on the 365 electoral promises it made in 2008 which I, along with many others, deemed safe to believe as logic dictated that the PN, having been in government for 10 years, was more than familiar with the economic situation and was in an infallible position to make promises that it could pragmatically keep.

Logic dictated that these were neither pies in the sky nor castles in Spain! Time has proved us all wrong.

This brings us to ask the terrifying question as to whether we should believe our politicians anymore. The truth about Mistra was fully revealed almost five years after the PN pulled every string in its bow to limit the damage caused by its most promising MP who only days before was being toasted as the next Minister for the Environment and, yes, eventually the premiership itself!

Instead of disappearing into the wings, tail between his legs, Dr Pullicino Orlando has managed to create this extraordinary position and is now forcing his own agenda, IVF, same-sex marriage, cohabitation down the throat of a Prime Minister who has, over the last 20 years, clearly shown himself to be highly inimical to such issues. The problem is that, as we have all seen, those for and against divorce did not follow party loyalties and that the decision to take an official anti-divorce stand by the PN was one of the greatest political mistakes in its history.

So, as we aestivate by order of the Prime Minister, what are we to make of all this? God only knows. Keep calm. There is nothing we can do.