Fair is fair. It seems amnesia is not as widely spread as I cynically made it out to be in this column last Sunday. Readers might recall I commented about the referral by the Prime Minister to the police for investigation of an allegation that someone involved in the privatisation process of the super yacht facility had murmured a suggestion that sounded suspiciously like a request for baksheesh.

The Prime Minister declared that he had heard only a day before of an allegation that had reached the inner sanctum of his Castille office eight months earlier. In contrast to my taking of the Prime Minister's word for that, the Labour opposition has been hinting broadly that it does not believe him and that he must, simply must, have heard the allegation well before Joseph Muscat broached it in the House of Representatives.

Admittedly, it is odd that word did not reach the Prime Minister much earlier. As the story goes, the Office of the Prime Minister official who came to know of the allegation - whose name is being freely mentioned in business circles - said nothing to his boss, but referred the claim to the Ministry of Finance.

As the story has further developed, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech did learn of the allegation early on, had it investigated - how, I do not know - but nothing amiss resulted. So Lawrence Gonzi was still kept in the dark.

Given the way things work in Malta, where flies flirting at Marfa know the peccadilloes of fellow insects gambolling in Marsaxlokk, it is certainly hard to believe that the Prime Minister not only was not told, but heard nothing untoward. Personally, I continue to believe him.

Lawrence Gonzi has developed some unlikeable political characteristics which I would not have thought would fit him snugly. But he does wear them, like the way he went about deciding to govern with a tough hand after the electorate re-elected him by less than the skin of his teeth.

Yet lying is not something I would charge him with, however much the opposition beat that drum. I continue to want to believe he is very angry at the way the allegation was handled, that someone close to him and Fenech got the mother of telling-offs. Gonzi will not admit to that in public, which is why the opposition, which would take natural delight in embarrassing him, will continue to charge him with fibbing.

The Prime Minister is in a Catch 22 situation. If he lets out that one of his top aides and Fenech did alert him to a serious allegation, it would probably mean the administrative and political end of the two of them. They would have to resign, or be unceremoniously dismissed. If he does nothing in public, and keeps his disappointment and anger behind closed doors, he will continue to be slammed by the opposition.

Possibly Gonzi is calculating that, should the police come out with a report that they found no hard evidence of suggested corruption, he will be able to spin another charge that the opposition is adept at making false accusations.

That is what he did with the Auditor General's report on the BWSC affair, although that intrepid official qualified - found questionable aspects of - the contract on no less than eight counts. Had that heavily qualified report been submitted by Enemalta's external auditors, the corporation's bankers would have called in their loan and overdraft facilities overnight.

Yet this is Malta, and the government chose to sweat it out with the aid of unconvincing spin. I rather suspect that Gonzi will have another bitter mouthful to chew. For, like I said at the beginning, amnesia may not be the order of the day this time round.

Last Sunday I wrote that the way the issue would be handled (in the investigation) is rather obvious. For starters, the Office of the Prime Minister official who first heard the claim will be called in by the police. He will be asked whom he heard it from. Presumably, I wrote, he will give names (for "names" it seems to be since the Prime Minister referred to "people").

The individuals so named will be called in by the police. It is possible - I continued - that at that stage they might either suffer from amnesia, like the star dramatis persona in the BWSC-Enemalta affair, or they will claim that they heard it vaguely from somewhere else and cannot offer hard evidence of attempted corruption.

My cynicism ruffled one of the dramatis personae in the super yachts issue. Last Monday I received a phone call from an MEP. He had a clear message for me.

A businessman, who made himself known to me through the MEP, wanted to tell me that amnesia was not one of his ailments. He had been questioned by the police and told them all he knew. Unlike, he added, a certain professional person who did get a touch of amnesia or something similar.

I took due note of the message and am sharing it with readers.

So there it is. Whether the police have much or little, they do have something to work with, and may be presumed to be doing so in their own way.

Aside from what the police find out what, many would like to have is, names. Who made the allegations? Who heard them at the Office of the Prime Minister? Why did he/they not tell Gonzi immediately? Why did Fenech too not alert the Prime Minister if he too became aware of the allegations?

This story, like the BWSC-Enemalta affair, still has a long way to go. And not just in political circles, either.