The legacy former Prime Minister left, because of his decisions, are resignations of key people, his included. These resignations come in the aftermath of the assassination of prominent investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017.

Daphne’s death caused a domino effect. Consequently, not only did he resign, but his chief of staff, star Minister Konrad Mizzi, the Police Commissioner as well as the Attorney General all resigned too. Former Deputy Leader Chris Cardona resigned as well, in murky circumstances too. This is all related to the current administration under a different premiership namely between 2013-2019.

Daphne wrote compromising stories about the above-mentioned and alleged corruption and illicit dealings or money laundering. The case is now sub-judice therefore I am not going to enter into the merits of the story but am going to limit myself to resignations.

To be fair, the Maltese do not endorse the culture of resignations, especially politicians. We had the odd resignation, for different reasons, in the past but not on such a massive scale. Why is this unprecedented? Because the European Union, and local NGOs namely Repubblika, Occupy Justice, the Civil Society Network and a handful of Opposition MPs exerted pressure for justice to be done. Secondly the case had become too hot and it was an albatross around the government’s neck.

Why am I writing about this? The administration has been riddled with scandals. It has become so much of a farce that it is verging on ridicule. One would ask who is next? Who is waiting for some other scandal or illicit dealing to crop up? All this is happening instead of the government working to improve peoples’ lives they worked to improve their, or rather the very few, lives.

In a court sitting in relation to the compilation of evidence against the alleged mastermind in the assassination it was revealed by a witness who testified under oath that he heard the mastermind allege that if he goes down he will get others tumbling down with him. This is, indirectly, an admission of guilt, but goes to show that he had the key people in power at ransom with the result that he could easily blackmail. Some resignations were pre-empted, whereas the others were forced.

In the meantime, we have heard another scandal that rocked the government and yet no resignations were announced to date. This was about an alleged money laundering transaction by the former consul to Shanghai. This seems to be unrelated to the assassination mentioned; however, it shows the laissez-faire attitude and the idea that everything goes. No political responsibility has been taken. This is unfortunately the legacy Dr Joseph Muscat left behind him.

I am not saying that resignations should be the order of the day or that someone should resign over a trivial matter as is sometimes done in other countries. Having said that, it goes to show how public life is taken seriously and how politicians are kept accountable. Nothing is taken for granted!

So until the next resignation I now shall conclude.