When there was all the sniggering and snide remarks about Amanda Muscat’s questionable dress sense to a public event, I thought it was not really that relevant in the great scheme of things. Should her husband, Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo, be blamed if his wife made a fashion faux pas? Sure, she could have used some sound advice from close friends and hired a stylist with good taste, but I didn’t really pay that much attention to it.

In the light of recent events, however, it has got me thinking that all of this is connected.

Irrespective of whether you are a man or a woman, if you do not know (or care to learn) what is suitable attire once you hold public office, then I’m afraid it indicates a much worse underlying issue. And the same applies if you are the significant other of a person who has been elected. I would say the same if a guy dating or married to a female politician turned up wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt at an official event. If you want to be a free spirit and wear what the hell you like without inviting criticism and disapproval, then I suggest you steer well away from the political scene.

The bottom line is that yes, how you present yourself matters, and if you think you can still get away with any outfit once you are connected to a person in politics, that speaks of a certain “u iva mhux xorta” mentality which (as we have now seen), points to a specific type of mindset which simply does not care what the public thinks…about anything they do.

It is clear from the audacious way in which Ms Muscat jumped from one lucrative post to another, aided by her husband (and later embroiling Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri), that it never occurred to any of them that this abuse of power is simply unethical and not done. To make matters worse, she had no qualifications which would remotely justify her being appointed to the role of policy advisor at an eye-watering salary, topped off by an “expertise allowance”. Even if she were qualified, the fact remains that her boyfriend-now-husband’s position as Minister should have ruled her out completely.

This is what so many people in this Labour administration seem unable to grasp and it repeatedly makes my jaw drop at how they fail to comprehend this simple, unspoken rule. No, you were not elected to give your relatives or your current girlfriend/boyfriend a job using public funds. And no, Labour supporters are not going to simply keep looking the other way just because your party is still somehow in power. I mean at this point, you have to basically be a masochist to be OK with someone being handed €70,000 p.a. just because she became romantically involved with her boss (Amanda Muscat started off as Clayton Bartolo’s private secretary). If you are a person with an average salary you can only dream of making that kind of money in your lifetime.

As public opinion continued to rage against this latest scandal, Amanda Muscat made things even worse for herself with the completely clueless way she replied to journalists, smirking and giggling as if this was one big joke. If we ever needed a definition of someone who has no self-awareness of how they are coming across, that video clip would surely be Exhibit A. This is what continues to astonish me; that as one political scandal after another erupts and Ministers keep falling like dominos, forced to resign in shame, those in the Labour inner circle still believe that no one will ever find out, and that no matter how brazen their behaviour and how much they steal from the public purse, they will get away with it.

This whole mess has also reinforced the prejudice which women continue to face in the workplace…and will unfortunately perpetuate the stereotype that a woman can only make it by “sleeping her way to the top”. Why bother telling girls to keep studying to achieve their dreams when the message here is, “oh honey, just date and eventually marry a guy who can hand you a cushy job.” Of course, we know this kind of nepotism happens all the time in the private sector, but when you are in Government there is the niggling little fact that this is taxpayers’ money.

And finally, let us not forget the inept way in which this was handled by the Prime Minister. Using two weight and two measures, he did not immediately force Bartolo to step down, like he did with Justyne Caruana after she was found to have given her (also unqualified) boyfriend a job. Instead he kept defending the Tourism Minister until he could not defend him any more after a second scandal involving Amanda Muscat broke out. The FIAU has now flagged transactions amounting to €50,000 to Ms Muscat in an alleged kickback related to a Malta Tourism contract with Italian cyclist Valerio Agnoli to promote cycling tourism in Malta. It was only at this point that Clayton Bartolo was made to resign.

Yet even as I write this, I read that Abela is making overtures to bring Justyne Caruana back to the fold – and a cynical electorate has already remarked that eventually Bartolo will be given “something” to keep him docile. This might placate the hard-core voters who are worried about pissing constituents off and losing the election, but it does not work with those who are completely disillusioned by Abela’s weak leadership.

Rather than griping that there are those who are trying to undermine him, maybe he should make it clear to his Ministers that playing fast and lose with public money is not acceptable, and that there can be no repetition of the Bartolo and Caruana scandals.

Otherwise the Standards Commissioner is going to be kept pretty busy.