In the days preceding Tuesday’s debate at the European Parliament and Wednesday’s vote, in which the EP resoundingly voted to urge Malta to investigate the Panama Papers scandal, the Labour Party tried to tell us that the PN was out to harm Malta once again.

Now that many of their colleagues in the Socialist grouping voted to approve the resolution, the PL cannot keep insisting that this was all motivated by partisan politics. The Labour Party cannot make us believe that the three Nationalist MPs managed to turn over 460 MEPs, including many socialists, against Malta.

If Casa, Metsola and Zammit Dimech had such strong powers of persuasion the Nationalist Party would surely have used them to win the last general election.

The result shows that this was clearly not a question of ‘traitors’ going abroad to damage Malta’s good name. It shows that Europe is now genuinely concerned about the situation in Malta and the state of the country’s institutions.

It is truly a shame that a journalist had to be murdered for the EU to start taking note of what is happening locally. The undermining of our institutions started much earlier. People are justified in saying they are disappointed with the EU, which had until now largely ignored serious issues in Malta. At least we now have their attention.

The resolution that was strongly backed by MEPs of all colours is not partisan in nature. It does not call for the resignation of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat. It does not even call for the resignation of Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi.

What it calls for is something that is obvious - something that should have happened automatically when two top politicians were implicated in the Panama Papers: a police investigation.

It is such a big shame that Malta’s name is suffering like it is because people in power decided that a police investigation was not the obvious thing to do, despite the serious facts that emerged from those reports, and the equally disturbing findings that emerged later from FIAU investigations.

In essence, Wednesday’s vote was a vote of no confidence in the police commissioner and the police force in general. And this is now coming from the entire EP, not just the PN in Malta.

In saying, more than a year later, that the police should investigate the Panama Papers allegations, the EP is highlighting the fact that the police have so far failed to act.

As if this was not bad enough, the government in Malta acts as if it was business as usual, as if Wednesday’s vote did not take place. What happened at the EP did not shame the PL or the PN – it shamed us all as a nation, and the government cannot keep its head buried in the sand.

Instead of going to Parliament and acknowledging that it has let the country down, the government keeps treating this as a partisan issue, blaming it all on the people sitting on the opposite side of the chamber and waving the 36,000-vote majority in our faces.

It is true that the PN MEPs represent the Nationalist Party – a political force that strives to be in power, and one that has its own credibility problems. But we have to be mature enough to realise that, whatever their true intentions might have been, the end result was in the best interests of us all.