Ever since union leader Chris Furbert let slip on Labour Day that someone “very dear to us” had his work permit expire and was waiting to learn if it would be renewed, the saga of the Reverend Nicholas Tweed has been played out like a highly predictable soap opera.

For the bog-standard soap opera, you see, you can take a week, two weeks or maybe a month or more off, yet return still to feel that you haven’t missed a thing.

Twenty years later, who knew that Victor Newman would still be running things on The Young and the Restless, with an ultra-suspicious Jack Abbott lurking and questioning his every motive?

Who knew that Patricia Gordon-Pamplin would hold a hastily arranged press conference on Thursday in her capacity as Minister of Home Affairs, speak for the best part of ten minutes, yet tell us precious little more than what we already knew when the story first broke officially on October 17 — more than two months ago?

This was more akin to Tiger Woods press conferences in the legendary golfer’s pomp: saying much without really saying anything at all.

Then a fire hydrant rewrote history.

Can we spot the fire hydrant in Ministry of Home Affairs v Tweed?

And since July 19 and then October 17, how far has this saga really moved on, other than to acknowledge that the next “seventeenth” we need to be mindful of — and which was not mentioned on Thursday, significantly — is what has been preordained as moving day for Tweed?

Seventeen days from today.

The clergyman himself, whose voice was heard above all others during those five days in March when Bermuda came to a standstill over emotive policy involving the very same ministry, has kept his counsel — allowing a sizeable following to plead his case, albeit in the face of irrefutable evidence that the t’s have not been crossed and the i’s have not been dotted.

As per “new” policy.

But can the Bermuda Government, with the airport redevelopment deal still a highly sensitive issue and “pathways to status” lurking in the shadows waiting to re-engage, really afford to take on “a man of God” and not come away mortally wounded if all it has in its favour is a pernickety stipulation?

Does the One Bermuda Alliance need this at a juncture when the Progressive Labour Party has sneaked ahead in the opinion polls for the first time in more than a year?

Is Tweed that divisive a figure that “letter of the law” is used as the chief defence mechanism against criticisms of political interference?

And if he is — if he truly is a threat to national security — someone, somewhere, should produce evidence of such, and there should be complaints to back this up.

There has to be more than what we have been given to work with. If the Government is unwilling to be fully transparent on this issue, it cannot bemoan all the flak that comes its way — and it is coming from many directions.

There can be no denying that Tweed, regardless of his immigration status, has been a royal pain in the backside to the Government. But as a social activist, is that not part of his mandate? To hold authorities accountable?

That he does so from the platform provided by this People’s Campaign pressure group is perhaps the most objectionable of his “crimes” and, equally, exposes the weakness of our politics and politicians — that opposition spin-offs the like of this and the fledgeling Move Bermuda faction can have any significant credibility or say-so in a jurisdiction that is only 65,000 strong.

What happened in March was embarrassing, plain and simple — making demonstrably clear, for those of a Sir John Swan or Walton Brown persuasion, that Bermuda is not remotely prepared for independence.

In Tweed, the People’s Campaign possesses, unsurprisingly, comfortably the most impressive and accomplished orator to be found anywhere in the vicinity of the Hill — on either side of the fence. But his expired work permit includes nothing of his sociopolitical activism in the job description to fill the post as pastor for St Paul AME Church.

Still, he came, he saw and he conquered, for there has not been much by dint of personality to stand in his way.

Now he has a problem, and legitimately so.

Whether someone was asleep at the wheel in the AME Church in mid-April when the 90-day countdown began to signal time to renew Tweed’s work permit or whether the Church, Tweed or both stuck two fingers up at the Department of Immigration and its not-so new regulations, this entire situation was totally avoidable.

Nevertheless, once all was out in the open, what has happened in the three months since the AME Church was found to be clerically challenged — most definitely not a play on words — and since it was reiterated that the Government’s public relations machinery is squeakier than an old barn door?

Not much, it seems. What we expected to hear on Thursday was many of the ins and outs of a situation that has resulted in Tweed’s claim for remaining as an employed non-Bermudian becoming untenable.

Gordon-Pamplin, in a game of truth or dare, is keeping her cards close to her chest in the hope that the Church or Tweed blink first.

The latter is refusing to play ball so what we got instead was much of the same as in October, with the addition of the odd trinket, the most significant being the name “Nicholas Genevieve-Tweed”.

Who is that? Why was that name shared with the media? Did that name have anything to do with the mess we have now? How poor were immigration practices before regulations were revamped in 2014? Give examples.

Simply saying that there must be a level playing field with one set of rules for all smacks of convenience, with the existing case in mind, and is not good enough when stacked against historical governmental incompetence that has so readily accepted “D” as a passing grade on such matters.

Kudos to the OBA and its Cabinet ministers in government for wanting to do better, and for determining to respect due process with regard to confidentiality, but surely it could have navigated its way around the fire hydrant so that we could be spared a rerun episode of All My Children.