Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, heading a government which is becoming beleaguered by accusations and practical examples of shortcomings and political and bureaucratic ineptitude, has apparently decided to spin a new theory of government. At the heart of it is an attempt to make the Commissioner of Police a goalkeeper for shots directed at the government.

Gonzi gave a very public example of this spin-effort in a one-to-one with Lou Bondi on the latter's TVM programme at the start of last week. There he got away much more than he should have in terms of the time he arrogated to himself and the way he comfortably evaded direct questions by referring to something completely alien to Bondi's question.

According to the Prime Minister's spin, opposition leader Joseph Muscat should have gone directly to the Police Commissioner regarding the case of an alleged attempt at corruption during the privatisation process of the shipyard's super yacht facility. The Prime Minister reiterated his accusation/proposal several times. In essence he maintained that Muscat should not have waited to raise the issue in Parliament. He should have gone directly to the Commissioner of Police who, said the Prime Minister, is good at investigating.

No doubt about that. John Rizzo is a seasoned investigator and interrogator who does his work conscientiously, without fear or favour. But there is a little snag to Gonzi's proposal - it is the government that governs, which in the first instance is accountable to the people - not the Commissioner of Police.

There is another snag - Finance Minister Tonio Fenech had the allegation reported to him from the Prime Minister's own office, eight months before the opposition leader raised it in Parliament.

Despite his standing and seriousness of the allegation that the privatisation process of the super yacht repair facility at the shipyard may have been vitiated with a suggestion that the baksheesh changed hands, the minister did not refer the matter to the police after an internal inquiry, the details of which were not made known, in contrast to that within the education ministry publicly reported upon last Wednesday.

Facing Bondi and running away with his lengthy statements the Prime Minister confirmed he was aware of that, but claimed it was okay for Fenech not to go to the police. What was not okay, according to the new Gonzi Theory of Government, was that Muscat did not revert to Rizzo, rather than raising the matter in Parliament.

In democracies such as ours purports to be, there is such a thing as separation of powers and administrative and political responsibility. It is up to the government of the day to run the administration and be responsible and accountable for what happens in it. It is up to the opposition to watchdog the government, even to hound it mercilessly as both the LP and the PN have done in their time in opposition, and to call the political administration to account.

What Muscat did was to ask in Parliament, the official operational home of the people's elected representatives, whether a report had reached Gonzi that something untoward had allegedly occurred in the super yacht privatisation process.

An opposition leader deals with the Prime Minister, not with component parts of the executive. Were opposition members to go directly to members of the public administration with their queries, the government would surely yell 'foul!' And rightly so.

To prove that point, if proof were needed, the responsible minister refused to allow a report on a bureaucratic investigation in a corner of the public sector (Gozo Channel) to be used in an ongoing court case - because the report had not yet been laid on the table of the House of Representatives (weeks after it had been completed). Sauce today cannot suddenly become not sauce tomorrow.

The Prime Minister obviously does not think that. Having done the right thing when, as is within his powers, he referred the super yachts allegation for investigation by the police the moment he heard of it eight months into its life, and unlike what his own minister had done, he undermined himself with his attempted spin on Bondiplus.

God forbid that the rules of the political game should be played about with in the manner proposed by Gonzi. The police have their own executive powers to investigate when the Commissioner has reason to believe that illegalities have taken place. But the Commissioner would have no time to sleep and administer his force were he really to become the depository of all that the opposition, and private citizens too, call on the government to account for.

The Prime Minister's latest spin effort suggests that he is beginning to feel the heat. He may have subdued the more restive of his backbenchers by creating part-time jobs for them at taxpayers' expense, even though taxpayers get no benefit from that. He cannot quell equally easily the open discontent which is growing over various aspects of the public and political administration.

To demonstrate that the Prime Minister's effort to drag the Commissioner of Police into areas the government should answer for in the first instance was pure spin, two days later the government majority on the Public Accounts Committee rejected a motion by its (opposition-appointed) chairman to investigate two acute cases in which public money was badly spent.

With one side of his mouth the Prime Minister tells the Leader of the Opposition to take his questions of corruption to the Police Commissioner. With the other side he denies the opposition the proper working of the mechanism of the Public Accounts Committee.

Something's beginning to rot, somewhere.