It was just after 3pm, on 16 October 2017, that news started to filter that there had been an explosion in Bidnija. Soon it became clear that this had not been an accident. It had been a bomb that had killed Malta’s best known journalist.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered that afternoon. She who was on the forefront, with her prolific website and columns in this newspaper and its sister daily, in the fight against corruption and all that was eating into the fabric of our society, had been eliminated. The last words she had written on her blog were: “There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate”.

Her assassination immediately triggered a reaction, locally and abroad. Never before had there been so much commotion, disdain, anger, sadness, shock, disbelief all mixed together in one huge cauldron of emotions. Never before had there been so much focus on Malta from international media as everyone tried to understand why such a heinous crime had taken place.

Her family had lost a wife, mother, daughter, sister and aunt. Malta had lost a journalist who, with her determination, skills and courage was fighting a battle against all that was wrong at the time (and still is). They thought they could silence her, but six years later, her memory and all that she stood for live on in those who continue her fight.

Hours after Daphne was assassinated, thousands gathered to pay tribute to her. That event triggered the birth of the civil society movement. It was like a collective understanding that Malta – or, at least, the people of goodwill – should rebel to what had just taken place. It was also the realisation that she had been left on her own. What came after her assassination was, in part, a result of the communal guilt that her lone battle had not been understood, followed and supported. It was realised that her struggles would have all been in vain unless they were taken up and continued. And that is what happened.

Then came the arrests, arraignments, compilations of evidence and trials of those involved in her murder. More is yet to come, with the man accused of being a mastermind behind the plot still to face his own judgment day.

There were political reverberations too. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was forced to quit in the wake of the developments into the case. It took him more than two years to quit.

A public inquiry established that the State had been responsible for her assassination; that not enough had been done to give her the protection that was required; that things needed to change.  

But things did not change.

The government still refuses to take up the recommendations of the inquiry. The media is still unprotected. And the culture of impunity that was created to safeguard the interests of those in power continues right to this very day.

When Robert Abela took over from Joseph Muscat, one of the first things he did was to order that the memorial to Daphne that had been set up opposite the law courts in Valletta is to remain untouched. In the preceding years, under Muscat, the government had regularly cleared up the candles, photos and mementoes that used to be put at the foot of the Great Siege Monument in her memory.

Abela took a different direction, and it was thought that it was the first step towards better times. But it was just an illusion. Abela continued in the footsteps of his predecessor on many counts, not least in the way he protects those around him even when they are blatantly in the wrong. Institutions which are supposedly there to serve the people fail to do their duties as they should.

The way Abela reacted to the latest scandal to hit the government says it all. Ian Borg was just doing his job, he said when confronted with the driving licences disgrace. It was a not so subtle message to the country’s authorities not to take any action against the big guns involved. Abela’s brazenness reached unprecedented levels. He did not even try to show a semblance of concern; he condoned the scam, indirectly telling others to do the same as he would be there to shield them.

The same goes for the disability benefits scam. The small fry have been taken to court for receiving money which they were not entitled to. Those who ran the scheme are nowhere near the law courts’ doorstep.

Those last words Daphne wrote are still so very significant today.

If anything, the number of crooks has increased, and the situation is even more desperate.