Last week, Joseph Muscat stepped down both as leader of the Labour Party and as Malta’s prime minister. He decided to resign as news emerged especially with regard to the murder probe of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

But what is Muscat leaving behind him?

Muscat eradicated the ‘us and them’ way of thinking, introducing a wider spectrum of involvement: “We are ready to work with you if you are ready to work with us!” This gave way to a radical change within the party. 

The Labour Party changed from one of political diehards to a movement which would include anyone.

Then came the 2013 general election. The first task of a newly-appointed Labour government was to persuade the EU to give Malta a chance to present a better budget plan.

Three months later, the new Labour government presented its own budget, and this was approved by the EU.

From then on, budget after budget, the Maltese Labour government continued to get praise from overseas.

Malta’s economy changed from one operating with a deficit to one that boomed.

Several measures were introduced that made Malta one of Europe’s most economically viable countries.

More companies started investing in our economy. 

Employment shot up, while unemployment is at a record low. This in turn gave people more money in their pockets and they started to spend more.

The government introduced more measures so that people would enter the labour market. Muscat created a domino effect which made companies richer, with people being better off and spending more.

With the introduction of a movement instead of the party, more people came to the fore and joined.

This meant that people with different ideas were coming forward. Different people meant different ideologies and different ways of thinking. Muscat’s open mindedness made it easy for these people to speak and discuss.

The introduction of gay rights, IVF and the divorce bill gave people new rights, which until a few months earlier they could never dream of having.

Understandably, one may ask the very pertinent question: “With the economy booming , why then did Joseph Muscat have to resign?”

To answer this question, one has to get a better understanding of the Maltese way of doing politics.

Muscat showed that a prime minister should shoulder responsibility not only when things are going well, but more so when things go wrong

If this was a success story for the Labour Party, it meant that it marked the downfall of the Nationalist Party. It started with their general election win by the narrowest of margins in 2008.

During that legislature, the PN in government also ended up without a majority in Parliament. This led to the PL winning the next general election in 2013 with the highest of margins.

This, together with the apparent success of the Labour government, didn’t go down well with the Opposition. They started a slander campaign against the government. Obviously, their target was Muscat.

They started with accusations that he and his family owned a secret company called Egrant. Muscat immediately ordered a magisterial inquiry into this allegation.

He also called a general election – an election which he won with an even larger majority.

A year or so later, the magisterial inquiry found that the Egrant company did not in fact belong to either Muscat or anyone else of his family.

A few months after the 2017 election, journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered with a car bomb.

Muscat immediately ordered a full-scale investigation and he requested the help of the American FBI, Europol and a Dutch forensic team.

The PN in opposition conducted a crusade on this murder, accusing the government of not doing enough.

Just a month and a half after the murder, three people were arrested and arraigned accused of being the persons who killed the journalist.

Immediately after this, the PN changed its tune and started accusing the government that in arresting these three, it was covering up for the real person behind this murder.

Today, we all know that the police, with the help of the foreign agencies involved, also arrested the middleman (who was given a presidential pardon on certain conditions) and also the person who is accused of being the mastermind behind the murder. Despite these arrests, the investigations into this murder are still ongoing, with one of the suspects being the ex-chief of staff of the prime minister, who since his arrest has resigned from his post.

The big question is: was Muscat involved in the murder?

From the answers to the many questions put forward during the several court cases connected to this murder, there isn’t the slightest indication that Muscat was in any way involved.

Nor did he know that there was a plot to kill the journalist. Nor did he know that the mastermind behind the murder was the person charged with it. He only knew what was going on during briefings with the police and on separate occasions with the Malta Security Services.

This is the first time we saw a series of resignations over allegations of corruption or wrongdoings.

Remember the hush agreement struck between prime minister Eddie Fenech Adami and his friend Joseph Fenech (Żeppi l-Ħafi) over the accusations in connection with the Richard Cachia Caruana stabbing case.

Fenech Adami gave Fenech a presidential pardon on all three counts of the accusations, but his testimony was never believed by the different courts. Fenech Adami never resigned.

During the 2003-2008 legislature, prime minister Lawrence Gonzi and minister Austin Gatt did not resign when the oil purchase scandal broke out.

During the same legislature, minister Jason Azzopardi and parliamentary secretary Beppe Fenech Adami never resigned over allegations of various scandals and wrongdoings.

And this is the greatness of Muscat!

He showed the world that he is not tied to his position.

Although he was never accused of anything by anyone (apart from a bunch of people calling themselves ‘civil’ society), he resigned because of something that others within his secretariat allegedly did.

Muscat showed he knew when it was time to go. He knows that a prime minister should shoulder responsibility not only when things are going well but more so when things go wrong.

And that, to my mind, is the greatest legacy Joseph Muscat has left to Maltese politics! Thank you, Joseph, for the 11 years of great things you gave to your party and to Malta in general!

Willie Grech is a retired government employee.