There were many new things I learnt in the last three weeks. The most unexpected of them all? That the UK has an official “election artist.”

Cornelia Parker was appointed to the role by the Speaker’s advisory committee on works of art and has been commissioner to “cover” the British general election and, at the end of it, to produce a work that will be added to the parliamentary art collection. She has said of her work, which has included a blown-up shed and flattened brass instruments, “I resurrect things that have been killed off.”

The kick-off whistle

That could well be the stunt Muscat tried to pull off last week when he announced general elections on 3 June. That he’s not quite original we already knew: he invited comparisons to Obama in 2008, donned an orange tie at the height of Cleggmania, expressed his wish to be anti-establishment like Trump after the result of the US Presidential election became known and now he’s taken up to parroting Theresa May in describing the Opposition as a “coalition of chaos.”

What better way to inject some adrenaline in the veins than to call a general election? After all, things have been going downhill for Muscat. From when his Chief of Staff and one of his Ministers were found to have been owners of secret Panama companies, it has been a hard call not only to completely bury the story but to convince the public that, hand on heart, he, Joseph Muscat, does not own the third Panamanian company.

Shifting goalposts

In the past year, Muscat could have consoled himself that the drama was playing out at the European Parliament. From Konrad Mizzi’s quizzing by the Parliament’s PANA committee (and Keith Schembri’s no show) to Leo Brincat admitting at his hearing that the revelations were resignation material, the rumblings were happening elsewhere. The Government also made sure that the entities created precisely to investigate and act in circumstances like these -- the Police, the AG’s Office, the FIAU -- had been completely gutted and rendered ineffective.

No longer. Thanks to a whistleblower we now know that the company owners were not deterred by repeated refusals of foreign banks to open accounts for politically-exposed persons. They found an easy solution. True to the old saying that charity begins at home, they opened accounts with a shady local outfit. And with all those companies, one hidden inside the other like a Russian matryoshka doll, we got to the biggest claim of the all: that Egrant Inc. is owned by the Prime Minister’s wife.

The final whistle?

The waters have been closing in on Joseph Muscat and he knows it. A snap general election -- even if a year early, even if only last month the PM was telling us that it’ll be in March next year -- was his last gamble. If he wins, Muscat might save his skin but nobody, probably not even Muscat himself, thinks that the current climate of political and economic uncertainty will lift anytime soon.

There is only one outcome to June’s election that can start to put us back on the long path back to normality. That is a new Nationalist government. Those institutions which were conceived with the idea to keep abuse in check will be strengthened and their holders will be appointed in a way that enjoys broad public trust. They will investigate fairly and without favour, be it an administrator or the holder of the highest political office. Malta deserves no less.