It is usual for the Prime Minister to give an end of year message on 31 December. Caretaker PM Joseph Muscat is expected to give one tonight.

This practice was started by Muscat, who moved away from the more traditional Christmas Eve messages of political leaders to a more secular date – the end of the year.

His end of year message on 31 December 2018 – with a view towards 2019 – turned out to be not prophetic at all.

The Malta Independent had led its report with Muscat saying that he believed Malta could be the envy of the world – but it so happened that Malta was in the spotlight in the international media for the wrong reasons towards the end of this year after a string of developments related to the investigation of the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

2019 will be better than 2018, Muscat predicted. Well, it certainly was not for him, as he failed to seal his dream of a job within the European Union structures and ended up being forced to resign.

The implementation of the plastic bottle return programme, proposals for the construction of a tunnel between Malta and Gozo and progress in the constitutional reform were other “predictions” made by Muscat which did not come true.

This is the full report carried last year