Almost a year ago, the Daphne Caruana Galizia public inquiry issued its findings. They were a grave indictment of the state, which was found responsible for enabling the assassination. But the prime minister and senior Labour officials were quick to say that the report had already been overtaken by events.

The mantra: Yes, the state accepts the report. But the state it blames is gone. We’re no longer the same state. Institutions have been reformed; key personnel have been changed. The people most criticised are out – from ministers to the police commissioner.

If that convinced you, think again. It looks like we have the same state, after all.

Remember the public inquiry’s strong criticism of lack of arrests and police investigations? This week, we discovered that the police failed to arrest Iosif Galea, a gaming consultant, who last year had a European arrest warrant issued by Germany.

The Italian police arrested him while he was on holiday last month. He somehow slipped the attention of the Malta police force.

Calum Steele, the president of the European Confederation of Police, doesn’t see any major break with the shortcomings identified by the inquiry. He told this newspaper about “an observed concern that there is too close a relationship between the police and the state”.

It’s a concern that poisons even actions that the police might actually deserve credit for.

Malta, too, issued a European arrest warrant for Galea. Can you blame suspicious minds for thinking that this warrant was, in fact, an attempt to protect Galea from the German police – by trying to get him to Malta first, in case he was ever arrested abroad?

If you don’t believe in a conspiracy, you should be even more perturbed that reasonable people can suspect one. It damages the necessary fabric of trust in the police force, which cannot recover its reputation without it.

We’re living in what should be a golden age of policing. Surveillance and forensic technologies have improved so much it’s become much more difficult to get away with crime. Think of how leaks of evidence of white-collar crime have become routine. Remember how, in the Sliema double murder case, the killers’ getaway trail was rapidly discovered through street cameras, their identities discovered, and one eventually extradited from abroad.

Despite all that, we’re witnessing a slump in trust in the police as well as a slump in recruitment. One source tells me that the annual intake is a third of the required minimum.

We’re witnessing a slump in trust in the police as well as a slump in recruitment- Ranier Fsadni

It would be grotesque for the politicians to put all the blame on the police. You can’t take credit for the reforms, without taking the blame for the results.

Nor can you take refuge behind ‘separation of powers’ to wash your hands of political responsibility. The police need adequate laws and resources to do their work properly.

GRECO (Group of States against Corruption) didn’t mince words in its recent report. There was no humbug about a ‘new state’. It castigated Robert Abela’s government for implementing only two out of 23 recommendations and doing absolutely nothing to change the surveillance laws to permit more effective gathering of evidence against crooked politicians.

Fortunately, we haven’t heard a repeat of last year’s mantra. No official has said that the minister responsible for the inaction – Edward Zammit Lewis – is no longer in office and that, therefore, there’s nothing to answer for and we can move on.

That would make us look ridiculous. But no more ridiculous than being told, last year, that we have a new state.

That amounted to telling us that the state didn’t feel responsible for past crimes enabled, or committed, by state officials. It was enough to remove them quietly and tighten up the rules. The country could begin with a blank slate.

It’s like saying that the ‘new state’ is only concerned with, and responsible for, future crimes.

The world doesn’t work that way. There are the demands of justice: the victims of crimes are owed reparations. Addressing future crimes includes deterring potential criminals by assuring them that crime does not pay.

Above all, it’s still the same state, legally, economically and politically. The past haunts the present. It jeopardises our present chances of success.

Legally, the state must live up to the obligations it entered into. In its dispute with Steward Health Care, the government is still bound by the VGH hospital deal, described as seriously vitiated by the auditor general.

How can the state address that problem without clearing up what really happened? It can’t, unless it is content to destroy its chances of building up an international reputation for probity.

Economically, how can the ‘new state’ address the good governance of Enemalta without clearing up how the corporation ended up – knowingly – buying those wind farm shares in Montenegro at triple the price they were worth only weeks before?

Politically, the state inherits the legacy of cronyism documented by the inquiry report. It can only ditch that legacy by demonstrating that the cronies of the past are no longer cronies in the present. How? Only by withdrawing the state’s protection and confiscating their get-out-of-jail cards.

Until then, it will seem that we only introduce reforms under pressure, not out of conviction. Who would that remind you of? Oh yes, the ‘old state’.