This is the last Sunday of the year 2019. A new decade descends on us. We are ending the decade with a horrific taste in our mouth. Blood, spattered and left to flow, is the symbol that will be tied to this decade forever.

A decade of shit. And to whoever tells me that this word - shit - or any other word should not be used because of readers' delicate ears, I say lay off.

Words like shit should be instruments of defiance against the horrors of the state.

Why should we care about using rude – or indelicate – words in these times? No, these are not the festive times we are used to. These are horrendous times where we are constantly finding out more about the horrific murder concocted at the heart of Government. And yet we have hardly realised – or only a few of us have – what a grievous condition the state of Malta is in.

Or, as the President of the Republic, the deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Education and a few other bigwigs have done, we realise these are exceptionally bad days yet do nothing. They spout useless words and do not act.

Words without action by people who can do something are just empty whitewash, a hope to be seen as pure and untainted in a future world where truth will triumph and justice will be restored.

The gruesome and monstrous murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia was bad enough. It was so bad that it should have seen the Prime Minister, and a few not so ‘prime’ ministers, resign immediately. But this is Malta – or it was in the decade that is coming to an end – and things happen in a way totally opposite to the norm in any other democracy.

Instead of reeling, the government – headed by Joseph Muscat – went on the rampage. And, as we are discovering, the rampage of lies, subterfuge, obfuscation, perjury, cover-ups, frame-ups and inaction on the part of the authorities, was beyond belief.

There are so many people implicated in the whole affair that – were it not for the tragic consequences – this would be a far-fetched farce.

Sadly, the only farce is that the population – most of us – are still in total amnesia-mode. The huge majority of Maltese and Gozitans have still not absorbed that this is not just a tough time for the country. It is not just a Good Friday moment, as Evarist Bartolo called Christmas. It is a moment where our whole edifice is crumbling because inside it is completely rotten. It is not just the few who were caught out and are guilty of corruption and murder but the whole system that has been infiltrated and corroded in its essence.

If politicians, the police, the secret service, the courts, the institutions and big businessmen are involved in, and partly to blame for what we are going through, what is there in the country to save?

Are there enough people of integrity with the strength and energy to extract us from this spiral of terror?

What got us here?

What has this decade done for us to have gone so awry? So wrong that from a land hardly known, a land where everything seemed bright and jolly, Malta has now become synonymous with filth, corruption, collusion, police ineptitude and murder.

Let’s take a journey into the past and look at these last years in a flash – to see what got us to this desperate stage.

2008

It all starts here. Not the decade but the real story of what has happened to turn this decade from a good one into one caked in slime and putrefaction.

The world faced an economic meltdown that sent many countries into their worst tilt since the big depression of the 1930s.

Malta had an election and Lawrence Gonzi unexpectedly won the people’s mandate.

2010-13

The economic crash hit hard the world over, but especially the Mediterranean. Gonzi, battle weary at home with a beleaguered government, kept a tight hand on the economy. The institutions functioned well, even if not perfectly, and were never subjected to overpowering governmental intrusion. Malta was seen as a true example of success and, against all the odds, flourished.

In the meantime, Joseph Muscat, freshly returned to Malta from his post in the EP, took over the Labour Party and introduced fresh blood and fresh ideas from outside the Party itself.

Lawrence Gonzi governed, or rather hobbled along. But even if his government was loopy and fragile, he kept the economy going, EU funds were secured for a number of years and Malta slowly moved on.

Joseph Muscat, egged on by PN dissenters, depicted the Gonzi administration as weak and totally corrupt.

The beast – Joseph Muscat’s party – that would be unleashed on the country was garnering treasure chests and backers to his cause which promised a heaven on earth but which was based only on greed and monstrous plans.

2013-2016

Joseph Muscat kept winning adulation everywhere he went. He touted his new brand of Labour as business-friendly. Anglu Farrugia, in one of his only proper and honest pronouncements, said that the Labour Party was controlled and dictated to by big business.

A man previously little known, Keith Schembri, tied all the big business together. Anglu Farrugia was sufficiently prophetic about the horror that had gripped the Labour Party. But he did nothing except spew some words of anger and then was given the prize of being Speaker of the House which bought his silence. This became the symptomatic response to Labour spokesmen who felt some shame at the horrors that were happening under Joseph Muscat’s watchful but uncaring eyes.

Labour won a landslide victory in the 2013 election. Life would never be the same for Malta. Screaming out the most wonderful mantras, Joseph Muscat and his gang were lauded as the best thing to happen to Malta since independence. He was seen as a messiah when all he did was repeat inane platitudes while he and his close friends plundered to their hearts’ content.

The adulation went to Joseph Muscat’s head and he even started declaring that he would make Malta not just the best in the EU but in the world.

Scandals, horrors, meritocracy gone wrong and the environment, which was already in a perilous state under the PN, were forgotten totally. Land was turned into tarmac or towers for the boys. Labour in power with Joseph Muscat at the helm was a total attack on all things just and democratic.

2016

The Panama Papers exposé should have created an earthquake in Maltese politics. But nobody resigned and nothing happened to the degree of trust in the Prime Minister.

Daphne Caruana Galizia fought a relentless battle to unveil the truth, while Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi continued spouting untruths and declaring their integrity. The integrity of thieves was at its pinnacle.

An election was called quickly – and inexplicably – by Muscat, who won again with an even bigger landslide. Instead of being dumped, the sleek Labour Party won big. And Daphne Caruana Galizia was denigrated beyond anything human or humane.

2017

The horror reached its unimaginable, yet obscenely obvious, conclusion: the intrepid journalist, who fought a regime alone, was assassinated.

The world was shocked. Malta less so. Malta’s golden age under the Joseph Muscat dictatorship (yes even democracies vote in dictators who overpower all safeguards of liberty) sailed on with a smug Prime Minister holding sway.

The Prime Minister purposely left many stones unturned and many crooks and murderers in power and in positions to commit the most heinous of crimes and cover-ups.

2018

While the world screamed out for Malta and its Prime Minister to take action, nothing was done. Or, rather, a lot was done undercover: the lies went on, the obstruction of justice – helped by an inept Police Commissioner, a corrupt-by-complicity Attorney General and other institutional lickspittles who stopped the truth from being aired. And obvious untruths went unchallenged.

2019

The edifice, at long last, began to be torn down. Protests and anger gripped part of the population. The world condemned Joseph Muscat mercilessly and he pledged to resign in due time while still conducting, or overseeing, the police investigations.

Some resignations, long overdue, happened. The situation was – and still is – not just desperate but beyond repair. There is not just corruption in the highest places but murder on their hands and the mother of all mothers of cover-ups was unearthed. Yet the inaction of the police in connection with Keith Schembri, Chris Cardona, Konrad Mizzi, Brian Tonna and Karl Cini was criminal itself.

Castille was a hive not of action but of inaction, to let the real perpetrators of the country’s worst crime go free or to help cover up their trails. The country reeled under the worst scenario imaginable and the world watched and condemned all that has happened and all that is now synonymous with Malta – corruption and the Mafia.

Everything touched by Joseph Muscat was corrupt and crumbling. The man touted to be our best saviour has been beaten and is not a hero but an incorrigible, arrogant villain. He is man who was – and remains – ready to cover up crimes for the buddy he loved and loves so much.

Malta was, and remains, in a state of shock and total meltdown. A decade that promised so much is, in reality, a tragic one drenched in blood and crime.

The next decades

The country needs an overhaul from top to bottom. But do the ones with the power to change it really want change or are we doomed to have more decades of shit?