libglib2.0-0_2.48.2 upgrade fails: subprocess old post-removal script returned error exit status 2

[Russell Searle]

I'm attempting to do a normal upgrade of libglib2.0-0 on an Ubuntu 16.04LTS system on an AMD64 VM instance. The upgrade fails repeatedly despite all attempts to clean caches and potential error conditions and reinstall. Here is the output from an apt upgrade command:

-----------------------------
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  libglib2.0-0
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,120 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
Get:1 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 libglib2.0-0 amd64 2.48.2-0ubuntu4.1 [1,120 kB]
Fetched 1,120 kB in 2s (433 kB/s)
(Reading database ... 123793 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libglib2.0-0_2.48.2-0ubuntu4.1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libglib2.0-0:amd64 (2.48.2-0ubuntu4.1) over (2.48.2-0ubuntu4) ...
/bin/rmdir: 1: /bin/rmdir: Syntax error: ")" unexpected
dpkg: warning: subprocess old post-removal script returned error exit status 2
dpkg: trying script from the new package instead ...
/bin/rmdir: 1: /bin/rmdir: Syntax error: ")" unexpected
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/libglib2.0-0_2.48.2-0ubuntu4.1_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess new post-removal script returned error exit status 2
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.23-0ubuntu10) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/libglib2.0-0_2.48.2-0ubuntu4.1_amd64.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
-------------------------------------------------------

I've attached the old post-removal script (/var/lib/dpkg/info/libglib2.0-0:postrm).

FWIW, none of the directories referenced in the post-removal script (i.e. /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gio/modules, /usr/lib/gio/modules and /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas) currently exist on the VM, so I don't even see how any of the rmdir commands in the script could be run to throw the errors reported during upgrade attempts.

Please assist if possible.

Thanks ...