As I stood behind the law courts on Saturday, watching two police vans driving out, first, Brian Tonna and Karl Cini and,  then, Keith Schembri and all the wretched company that went along with him, all I could feel was a sense of deep sadness.

Sadness at the fact that, just in front of that building, is a makeshift monument to a woman who was brutally murdered and, yet, we are still far from bringing the minds behind her assassination to justice. I could not help but think of Al Capone, who was never jailed for all the atrocious crimes he commanded but only because he evaded his taxes. 

I was also thinking of all the families whose lives were ruined because of these people’s alleged wicked deals – let us not forget all the workers who lost their jobs with the Allied Group after Schembri’s ‘discounted’ (!!) sale of machinery crippled the organisation financially. I could not help but wonder how many other families, who we do not (yet) know about, were also financially crippled by this alleged bunch of crooks.

There is no sense of triumph in what I say but deep disappointment at the fact that my once beautiful country has been repeatedly cheated and spoilt by unscrupulous persons who took advantage of the power we entrusted to them, only to manipulate it for their own selfish and corrupt interests.

Obviously, there are others who also have to join them in Corradino, which is apparently slowly transforming itself into the centre of the elite scum of Malta. As a dear friend remarked on Saturday: “Corradino has seen more guests check in tonight than all the hotels on the island combined.”

As citizens, we will only see justice done when all the persons responsible for the mess in our country are behind bars and what we saw Saturday seems to be only the tip of the iceberg.

Let us not forget how the Italian mafia rallied its powers from prison- Vicki Ann Cremona

Alexander Dalli, the prison director, has a huge responsibility on his shoulders. Some of the key persons who allegedly participated in the plan to line their pockets at Malta’s expense are under his care and are suspected of being among those forming the roots of the Maltese mafia. What is he going to do to make sure they do not plot and plan from inside prison? What non-violent precautionary measures is he going to take to ensure this does not happen? Let us not forget how the Italian mafia rallied its powers from inside prison until the leaders were all dispersed across the country.

Our crooks cannot be dispersed anywhere else, so he needs to watch out because he is accountable to us all, the whole country, to ensure that no mafia reconstitutes itself from inside Corradino.

And what about our state media? What steps is the Broadcasting Authority going to take against the sparse information dished out on Saturday evening by TVM, the state broadcaster, which runs thanks to our taxes? How are the head of the newsroom, the CEO and the chair going to account for the lack of information that, as citizens, we are all entitled to and which should have been given to us by the TV station they head?

Why was there no ‘running commentary’ on what was happening, the way serious television stations deal with this sort of happening of national importance? I will not go into the pitiful studied indifference of One TV because it proves the point  made ad nauseam: party media should be banned and state television taken out of the hands of politicians, whatever the colour of the party in power. At least, our prime ministers would, unlike Robert Abela, address the whole nation and not simply the party supporters whose votes they are afraid of losing, because, although he seems to forget it, our prime minister is accountable to the nation as a whole.

Again, I think we owe a huge thank you to all our journalists working for the independent media, thanks to whom we could know what was happening.

It is thanks to their tireless efforts, the research they relentlessly carry out that helped Malta discover the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, the callous SMSes… and to their analyses and commentaries, so sadly lacking in our public media, that we obtain the real picture behind the evil tentacles that have seized Malta.

Saturday’s arraignments, long overdue, were a step in the right direction. But a word of warning: this must only be seen as a beginning. Much, much more has to come.

The tentacles that have seized our country need to be chopped off and the octopus’s head crushed, hopefully, never to rise again. We will not lower our guard or rest until we see this happen.

Vicki Ann Cremona, member, Repubblika.