There is a specific, grim hilarity to watching the snake eat its own tail, and right now, the political theater in Malawi is serving up an all-you-can-eat buffet of reptilian self-cannibalism. The headlines are screaming about a “constitutional crisis” and a “deepening crisis of lawlessness,” but let’s call it what it really is: a bureaucratic slapstick routine performed by people who shouldn’t be trusted with a stapler, let alone state power.

Here is the situation, stripped of the polite euphemisms usually employed by the weeping hearts of the global press. The Malawi Police Service (MPS), a body that presumably operates under the delusion that it enforces the law, decided to slap handcuffs on Moses Kunkuyu. Now, Kunkuyu isn’t just some random pedestrian unlucky enough to look at a patrol car the wrong way; he is the Member of Parliament for Dedza Mlunduni and, crucially, the National Campaign Director for the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). For those of you not following the intricate tribal warfare of Malawian politics, the MCP is the party currently sitting in the big chair. That’s right. The police, technically the armed wing of the executive branch, arrested a high-ranking official of the ruling party. This is the kind of incompetence that transcends mere stupidity and enters the realm of avant-garde art.

Parliament’s response was immediate and hysterical. They issued a “stinging rebuke,” a phrase that always makes me laugh. In the lexicon of modern governance, a “stinging rebuke” is roughly as effective as trying to stop a charging rhinoceros by reading it a haiku. The legislature is demanding Kunkuyu’s immediate release, citing the arrest as unlawful. They are clutching their pearls, shocked—shocked!—that the police would dare engage in “political policing” and display “constitutional contempt.”

Let’s pause to appreciate the rich, velvety texture of this hypocrisy. “Political policing” is the only kind of policing that exists in a state where institutions are treated like personal fiefdoms. The police force in such environments does not exist to serve and protect; it exists to secure and collect. Parliament acts as if this is an aberration, a sudden glitch in the Matrix, rather than the operating system itself. The critics are calling it a pattern of lawlessness. I call it Tuesday. The only reason the legislature is up in arms is that the truncheon swung in the wrong direction. Usually, the police are supposed to harass the opposition, the journalists, or the poor. When they accidentally snag a VIP from the ruling coalition, suddenly the “Constitution” becomes a sacred text rather than a doorstop.

Parliament’s outrage is rooted in the narcissism of the political class. They operate under a tacit agreement: we make the laws, you enforce them on the plebeians, but we remain untouchable. By arresting Kunkuyu, the MPS violated the Omertà of the elite. They broke the fourth wall. You don’t arrest the Campaign Director; you arrest the people protesting the Campaign Director. It’s a rookie mistake, really, revealing that the Malawi Police Service is either off the leash or so blindly incompetent that they can’t distinguish between the hand that feeds them and the neck they’re supposed to step on.

So now we have a “deepening crisis.” Deepening implies there was a shallow end. There wasn’t. The waters of incompetence have always been over their heads. The image of Parliament formally demanding the release of one of its own from the custody of the state police exposes the fracture at the heart of the government. It’s a breakdown of the chain of command so severe it suggests there is no command, just a series of conflicting orders shouted into a void. If the legislature has to publicly shame the police into following the law, the rule of law has already left the building, hailed a cab, and is halfway to the border.

What will come of this “stinging rebuke”? Absolutely nothing. There will be noise. There will be posturing. MPs will stand up and make speeches about the sanctity of their office, inflating their chests with the hot air of self-importance. Kunkuyu will likely be released, perhaps with a mumbled apology or a technicality, and the carousel will keep spinning. But the veil has slipped. We have seen the machinery of the state for what it is: a rusted, grinding contraption where the gears don't mesh, piloted by people who are more interested in preserving their own immunity than preserving any semblance of justice. The crisis isn't that the law was broken; the crisis is that the people in charge are only mad about it because this time, the handcuffs fit their own wrists.