A small event can change the course of history, it is said. So imagine what a string of connected happenings taking place one after the other within a short space of time can do.
Half a year ago, Joseph Muscat was riding high. Fresh from thumping victories in the European Parliament and local council elections, he was looking forward to an honourable exit from the national political scene, the one he had been promising all along.
He thought he could get a lucrative position within a European Union structure, the same institution he so vehemently opposed in his younger days when he campaigned for Malta to remain out of the EU. His sudden change to becoming pro-Europe – with his serving as an MEP to boot – should have been enough for anyone to see to what extent his sense of opportunism goes.
But that position did not arrive and, knowing what we know today, his European peers must be breathing sighs of relief. They avoided a European embarrassment by a whisker because, we’re told, Muscat was only a whisker away from taking on a European role.
He missed that bus, and after that disappointment Muscat started the guessing game – at times he hinted that this pledge not to serve more than two terms would not be maintained; at others he suggested that he was planning a glorious departure, and this kept anyone interested in succeeding him always at the ready.
But life happens when you’re making other plans, it is said too. And so while preparing the best way to leave politics – all politicians have big egos, but some politicians have bigger egos than others – Muscat found himself right at the centre of the biggest story of the century. Instead of leaving when he wanted to and on his own terms, he has been compelled to quit. The link between his office and the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia pushed him out.
Public pressure, including the many protests by civil society, played its part. The independent media made its voice heard too, many times. The Labour Party and the Cabinet of Ministers will never admit it, but there was an internal force against him that kept growing as the days went by and Muscat ultimately succumbed to it.
He did not want to leave like this. He wanted a different legacy. His supporters will continue to speak about the good things he did, but he will always be remembered as the Prime Minister who resigned because of a murder.
He is not the only one to suffer the consequences of his decisions – the ones he took, and the ones he failed to take. 2019 also saw the dishonourable departure of two of his closest allies, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi, with whom he shared the famous election billboard with the words “Shame on you” – how prophetic they turned out to be.
When Mizzi and Schembri were caught having opened companies in Panama, Muscat defended them, kept them by his side and retained his full confidence in them.
It was then that the snowball started rolling. As the days, weeks, months and years passed, the snowball gained momentum, force, strength and size, until it hit Muscat and his friends like a bowling ball knocks down pins standing in its way.
Never before has Malta seen such a strike.