The news that Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi were being interrogated by the police earlier last week was met with a collective sense of relief by law-abiding citizens, as well as a growing sense of weariness.
It has been almost exactly one year since developments in the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder case led to a series of arrests and a national governance crisis which brought Joseph Muscat’s term in office to an abrupt end.
Since then, many key figures from that dark period have been replaced, and their successors appear to be doing their best to make up for lost time.
But despite a series of appointments, arrests and investigations, little has tangibly changed so far. The usual suspects were re-questioned, the usual suspects were released. Those suspected of wrongdoing have yet to face charges; investigations remains “ongoing”.
The reality is that investigations as complex as these take time, even in the best of circumstances. And the new crop of investigators did not inherit the best of circumstances.
Instead, they took over institutions which had been left to be rendered useless by their predecessors’ refusal to act, despite multiple, repeated indications of bad behaviour by people in the highest positions of power.
As those institutions dawdled, the people who should have been scrambling were instead working to prepare their defences, cover up their tracks and ‘lose’ their phones.
Some of those who played a part in this travesty of inaction are now saying that they remained silent as they wanted to bring about change from within. Even if that is true, their efforts were in vain and they must therefore share in the blame for the debacle they helped bring about.
There is still the fear that those who turned the country into their personal fiefdom will get away with it. If that happens, the implications will be massive and former top officials including former police chief Lawrence Cutajar and former attorney general Peter Grech will have a lot to answer for.
Cutajar is now under investigation himself and the police force he used to lead has a moral imperative to establish why he chose to ignore the rampant corruption happening under our collective noses. They need to question all those found to have benefitted from bribes of those who stood to make millions from underhand deals.
The extent of economic crimes which was ignored for years has decimated Malta’s international reputation and left a dead journalist in its wake
Those responsible for letting crimes go unchecked for their own reasons or to placate their political masters must face justice.
Recent revelations about regulators and MPs accepting gifts from wealthy businessmen, as well as a lawyer’s brazen attempt to offer a Times of Malta journalist cash, reveal the extent of the rot that has infested Maltese society.
The extent of economic crimes which was ignored for years has decimated Malta’s international reputation and left a dead journalist in its wake.
It is a sorry indictment of the country and its leaders that people are no longer shocked at news of top politicians being arrested and investigated for corruption.
The dark reality of the unjustified delay of Schembri and Mizzi’s interrogation was summed up succinctly by Caruana Galizia’s son Matthew through a tweet this week: “Almost five years too late. We had to remove three police commissioners, one attorney general, one prime minister, several ministers and many other officials. And my mother was murdered in the process.”