A Prime Minister should have no problem giving orders to Cabinet ministers, parliamentary secretaries, his own secretariat and even to the chiefs of government entities. Often, he would do this through his chief of staff but who orders the chief of staff himself? Apparently, no one can tell Keith Schembri what to do, not even his boss.

This week, members of the European Parliament will be in Malta on a fact-finding mission on the state of the rule of law in the country. That they have to come here to check on something that should be so basic in a fully-fledged European Union member is an indictment in itself. But even worse would be if the delegation found no cooperation from the people they wish to meet. And that includes Mr Schembri.

The Prime Minister’s chief of staff likes to remain under the radar, never really stepping into the limelight. He leaves that to Joseph Muscat, Labour’s public face, whom many find amiable. Mr Schembri is the Prime Minister’s closest aide, his advisor, possibly his mentor. He may be the brains behind the whole of the Labour Party ‘movement’, which is Labour no more.

Mr Schembri may think he is not a public person and, therefore, the scrutiny his boss has to go through does not apply to him. That argument may have held water until the release of the Panama Papers that showed that both he and Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi held secret companies in Panama.

Mr Schembri and Dr Mizzi should have gone the very day that information emerged and the police should have investigated them. That did not happen. Instead, the Prime Minister has defended them for inexplicable reasons and is still paying the price for that, although not electorally.

Mr Schembri could not return to the shadows after the Panama debacle. Suddenly, he was all over the place. His name emerged in investigations by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit into payments to the former managing director of Allied Newspapers.

There were also allegations of passport kickbacks through the passport sale scheme championed by the Prime Minister and, of course, the controversy over his relationship with an American money-printing company, which he helped attract to Malta. And, yet, despite all this, he still thinks himself as an advisor to the Prime Minister.

When the European Parliament’s Pana Committee was in Malta earlier this year, Mr Schembri refused to appear before it. Now, it seems he plans to do the same with the MEPs’ delegation, presumably on the same grounds, that he is a private person.

This is where Dr Muscat is expected to step in and the Civil Society Network has called on the Prime Minister to actually “order” Mr Schembri to accept the invitation to appear before the EP delegation and give “exhaustive replies”.

The Prime Minister said he was always prepared to engage with Euro parliamentarians, which is commendable, although his recent ‘engagement’ with the Occupy Justice campaigners was not only late in coming but also quite useless. It has reached a stage where this country does not know who is the real Prime Minister.

A failure to move against Mr Schembri would explain many of the Prime Minister’s past actions, none of which would make him look good.

This is a Times of Malta print editorial