One thing is sure about DCG’s death. At least one story – at least one – was true.

All that shouting and banging on the table for “Proof! Evidence!” have now been silenced by the deafening blast of a bomb. Not any bomb, but a bomb of a particular type which should set intelligent minds thinking.

Nobody kills you for no reason. They kill you because you are doing or saying something that harms them. The harm might be material or psychological – I do not want to exclude the madmen and the psychopaths. In any case, the harm is real, otherwise there would be no need to eliminate the person.

For the Police to identify the brains behind the bomb, they need a special identikit which they can compile only by investigating each and every story DCG was investigating and might have brought about the end of one or more careers, be they in politics, the criminal underworld, or elsewhere.

The people involved in those stories which they find to be true would then be the list of suspects.

But I say all of this sarcastically. Because I do not think that this path will be followed.

Instead we will be given a series of watered-down lectures in forensics. A sort of Forensics for Idiots charade.

Precedents are not binding, but they do help us orientate ourselves in the maze of political life.

On account of the lack of political “economies of scale”, our experiences as a small country are limited and we therefore look at foreign ones for inspiration.

When the Italian politician Aldo Moro was killed, the then Minister for the Interior Francesco Cossiga resigned. Nobody ever implied that Cossiga had anything to do with the murder – indeed he was later made President of the Republic – but on the horrendous occasion of Moro’s murder, the State shouldered responsibility for failing adequately to protect Moro’s life, and Cossiga, embodying the State in that particular moment, resigned on behalf of the State.

It says a lot about Malta that our politicians do not see the real relationship between State and office-holders. That the État is not moi does not even feature in the worldview of certain people.

It is my firm view, and that of many, many others, that the State of Malta had a duty to protect Daphne Caruana Galizia’s life. The State failedin this, DCG lost her life, and now somebody should shoulder the responsibility. On behalf of the State.

Otherwise, it is a non-democratic State running roughshod over the rights and dignity of individuals. It is an essentially authoritarian State that could not care less about the rule of law.

This is what all the fuss on the rule of law means. Power resides in the law, not in individuals, not even in the State. To put it differently, even the State is subject to the Law.

By “Law”, pace Robert Musumeci, one does not mean the written legislation, but the entire constitutional-legal system, which is made up of conventions (or customs or usages), judicial decisions, and even doctrine, that is the teachings – political, legal, philosophical – of learned individuals. In other words, the “Law” is the body of both written and unwritten rules.

If the State is democratic, then those elected by the people on behalf of the people have to shoulder political (not personal) responsibility, and forfeit the office given them by the people when the State fails in its duty under their watch.

Being told what to do by foreigners is nobody’s aspiration. The instinct to tell the Yankee to go home – whoever the Yankee happens to be in your particular case – is not just a Maltese characteristic. It is universal.

So when foreigners come to Malta to pontificate, our instinctual reaction is to tell them to “Go Home!” if we are polite, somewhere else if we are less polite. We perceive in their admonitions, in the friendly chat they invite us to, the hidden message that we are on the fringes of civilisation, only a couple of inches away from third-world status. And, rightly or wrongly, we resent the inference.

It is as if we were not aware of Locke’s Treatise on Government, a fundamental text for the philosophico-legal structure of the Modern State. In that treatise, Locke spelled out the obligation of the sovereign to protect his subjects, an obligation derived from the social contract, whereby each individual agrees to give up some of their freedom in exchange for their personal security. As if in Malta we still lived in a “state of nature”, where you do pretty much as you please, because the State is too weak to impose order anyway.

Before becoming a paid-up member of the Nationalist Party, when I still was a paid-up member of the (now neo-liberal) Labour Party, I was already a nationalist. I think I have been a nationalist all my life.

By “nationalist” I mean the belief that your nation is both different from and equal to all the others. I now realise that the underlying propulsion of that belief is that the Maltese are essentially civilised and don’t need to be mentored and hectored by the more “advanced” nations. I have to thank both my parents for this positive and assertive attitude which I think is shared by many other Maltese.

So I can completely understand the visceral reaction to the lecturing and posturing of foreigners who want to teach our political class about correct political behaviour, or us the people how to behave.

But I also think that the case is different with these foreigners who are now expressing their utter shock and dismay at DCG’s brutal murder. I do not think they are lecturing a backward nation. I think they are scolding an equal partner.

The shift in mentality is important. If you want to belong to a club – in this case, the Club of Advanced (formerly known as “Civilised”) Nations – you have to behave according to the rules of the Club. You are accepted in a club because the other members estimate that you have all the attributes to belong to the Club. If not, you are either not accepted, or else you are morally ostracised.

Daphne’s death, therefore, ushers in the spectre of the perennial question of whether we are real Europeans, or whether we are just pretending.

Is our Prime Minister European because he always flaunts a flag of the EU behind him when he delivers important messages to the nations and takes photos with important people or during important events?

Does the EU flag – which by the way, no private residence in the country hoists on its rooftop –make us European?

Our Prime Minister would prove to the world that we are real Europeans (since that seems to be the nation’s aspiration) when he behaves according to European standards.

Failures of the State usually imply, in Europe at least, that office-holders shoulder responsibility and go.