Yesterday's verdict brought one criminal trial to an end but it did not bring Malta's reckoning with the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia to an end, NGO Repubblika said Thursday.

"A jury has answered the question that was put before it. We are shocked and profoundly disappointed by its verdict. As we said yesterday, we believed, and continue to believe, that the prosecution presented a serious and compelling case. But respect for the rule of law requires us to respect the authority of the court and the jury's decision, including when that decision is not the one we believed the evidence warranted. We do not propose to retry that question in public," the NGO added in its second statement following the acquittal of Yorgen Fenech on Wednesday..

"But the assassination of a journalist, the corruption she investigated, the failures of the institutions that should have protected her, and the culture of impunity identified by the Public Inquiry are not resolved by the verdict in one criminal case," the NGO said.

The question today is therefore not whether Malta accepts yesterday's verdict. It must. The question is what Malta does next, the NGO said.

The public inquiry remains

The independent Public Inquiry established that Daphne Caruana Galizia's assassination was intrinsically linked to her investigative work and that the State must bear responsibility for creating the culture of impunity in which her murder became possible. Those findings have not been erased, the

Five years after the public inquiry delivered its report, almost none of the reforms demanded have been implemented. Its recommendations cannot remain a document commemorated every July and ignored for the rest of the year. They must now be implemented fully and urgently, the statement added.

That means serious reform against corruption and abuse of public office. It means measures capable of confronting organised crime and obstruction of justice. It means effective systems for identifying and responding to threats against journalists. It means protection from intimidation, economic pressure and abusive litigation. It means genuine access to information and institutional conditions in which journalism can operate independently of government and powerful private interests.

Protecting journalists does not mean assigning them bodyguards after somebody decides to kill them. It means building a country in which exposing corruption does not make a journalist the enemy of the State, the NGO said.

The corruption Daphne investigated must be prosecuted

Serious allegations arising from matters Daphne investigated remain inadequately investigated or unprosecuted, the NGO said.

Every credible allegation of corruption connected with her work must be investigated independently, promptly and without regard to the political, economic or social power of the people concerned. Where the evidence justifies prosecution, prosecution must follow.

No one should be too powerful to be investigated. No office once occupied, political service once rendered, friendship once enjoyed or wealth accumulated should provide immunity from the law, it added.

Political responsibility does not disappear

The Public Inquiry established the State's responsibility and identified a culture of impunity generated at the highest levels of Joseph Muscat's administration. Malta cannot renew itself while rehabilitating the political culture that brought us here.

Those who bore political responsibility for creating, sustaining or defending that culture of impunity should not now be rehabilitated as statesmen or returned to positions of public authority and influence. Criminal responsibility is determined by courts. Political responsibility is determined in democratic life, the NGO said.

Yesterday's verdict does not extinguish political accountability. This is not vengeance, and it is not collective punishment. It is an elementary requirement that public office carries consequences when exercised in ways that gravely damage democratic institutions.

Nor can Malta pretend that the problem belongs only to the past. The political culture that flourished under Joseph Muscat did not automatically disappear when Joseph Muscat left office. Corruption scandals continue to emerge without adequate consequences. Democratic safeguards remain vulnerable. Institutions charged with defending the rule of law remain exposed to political pressure.

A genuine national reckoning must therefore concern not only what happened then, but how Malta is governed now.

The State has already been found responsible for the circumstances that enabled Daphne's assassination, and a Prime Minister has previously apologised for the State's failures.

But an apology is not a sentence spoken once at a press conference. A sincere apology requires acknowledgement, responsibility and change.

The police must be independent

No democracy can function properly if people suspected of serious wrongdoing can reasonably hope that political relationships will tell them what investigators know, what investigators intend to do or how they might avoid consequences.

The Malta Police Force must be structurally and operationally independent of government. Appointments, security of tenure, resources and accountability mechanisms must allow investigators to follow the evidence wherever it leads: into Castille, ministries, political parties, major businesses or the police force itself.

Police officers must know that their careers do not depend on pleasing politicians. Politicians must know that the police do not work for them. Citizens must know that the law applies equally to everyone.

Repubblika's response to yesterday's verdict will not be to dispute the authority of the court. It will be to insist that every other institution now exercises its own authority and fulfils its own responsibilities. Investigate the corruption Daphne exposed. Implement the Public Inquiry in full. Close the gaps in the law. Guarantee the independence of investigators. Protect journalists. Reject the rehabilitation of the political culture that created impunity. Teach another generation that public office is a trust and corruption is an attack on democracy.

Behind all these demands remains the human reality with which we began yesterday: a family has lived for almost nine years with the murder of a wife, mother and daughter, and with everything that followed it. No institutional reform can undo that loss. But the least Malta owes Daphne's family, and the country she served through her journalism, is to learn from what happened and ensure that the failures that made her assassination possible are never repeated.

Yesterday a trial ended. The work that Malta has still not done remains.

Repubblika said it intends to continue doing its part.