Joseph Muscat is upset that Opposition Leader Alex Borg has "brought Muscat into the picture" while briefly commenting on the ongoing trial of Yorgen Fenech.

We hate to break it to the former prime minister, but he has been in this particular picture for a very long time.

Indeed, Joseph Muscat's name is inseparable from one of the darkest chapters in Malta's recent history.

He was Prime Minister when Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated.

He was Prime Minister when a culture of impunity was allowed to develop around the highest levels of government.

He was Prime Minister when people with extraordinary access to Castille appeared to move comfortably between the worlds of politics, big business and individuals who were later to become central figures in the investigation into the journalist's murder.

No amount of retrospective explanation, political spin, or carefully chosen words can erase that.

The public inquiry into Daphne's assassination could hardly have been clearer. It found that the State should bear responsibility for the assassination because it had created a climate of impunity generated from the highest levels of the administration at Castille, which spread to regulatory bodies and the police, and contributed to the collapse of the rule of law.

It found that the State had failed to recognise the real and immediate risks to Daphne's life and had not taken reasonable measures to avert them.

This is the legacy that Muscat cannot simply wish away, whether he likes it or not.

And it is precisely why what is now emerging in court matters.

Borg said that testimony in the Fenech trial is raising "extremely serious questions" about what was happening at Castille during Muscat's premiership, including links between people in positions of power and suspicious individuals.

We are hearing about relationships, access, influence and extraordinary goings-on in Castille. We are hearing testimony that is forcing the country to look again at the proximity between political power and people who should never have been anywhere near it.

If Muscat knew about them and did nothing to stop them, then he failed in his duties as Prime Minister. If he did not know about them, then his leadership qualities come under scrutiny. Whatever the case, he was the country's political leader when the plan to assassinate an investigative journalist was being hatched and, later, implemented.

And this is why Muscat is always going to be "in the picture".

These are facts of Malta's recent history, not inventions of the Opposition. It's not Borg who has put Muscat at the centre. Muscat has been there from the beginning and will never be able to extricate himself from it.

There is another uncomfortable fact for Muscat in relation to those tumultuous times. In December 2019, as his government was engulfed in the crisis following Daphne's assassination and people were protesting in the streets, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project named him its Person of the Year for Organised Crime and Corruption. OCCRP said its selection reflected what it described as the flourishing of criminality and corruption.

That was an international investigative journalism organisation making a damning assessment of his administration. It was not the Opposition who put him there. It was a shameful day not only for Muscat, but for the whole nation.

The public protests of late 2019 were an unmistakable expression of public anger. The pressure ultimately led to Muscat announcing his resignation.

And then there is the three hospitals concession. Muscat has since faced criminal charges in connection with the hospitals deal, the first Maltese PM to be embroiled in such serious accusations. He has pleaded not guilty, and those charges must be determined by the courts.

Muscat has been in the picture because he was the head of the government when all this happened.

The Daphne public inquiry warned that the culture of impunity had spread through institutions. Years later, if the country is still hearing revelations about goings-on in Castille right under Muscat's nose, then what the inquiry established years ago is again being confirmed in court, in greater detail.

Muscat may dislike being brought into the picture, but a former prime minister cannot reasonably demand that his name be kept outside discussions about the political legacy of the administration he led. A former prime minister cannot expect his political responsibility to be forgotten.

History put him there.

The public inquiry put him there.

His years in Castille put him there.

And the evidence being heard in court is putting him there again.

The former prime minister cannot modify the period in which he governed simply because he does not like the questions now being asked about it.

Malta does not need another exercise in political sweet-talking.

It needs the truth, accountability, and the rule of law.

And those who were in positions of power when the system failed have a responsibility to answer for what they did or did not do.

Certainly in the political and historical sense.

That is the picture Joseph Muscat cannot escape.