Joseph Muscat walked into the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder inquiry on Friday as a former prime minister who left a country in political disarray.

He was there as a witness, but in a sense, he was also in the dock. Caruana Galizia was killed under his watch, and the murder probe uncovered many ties between his office and the crime.

So when Muscat entered the courtroom, he did so prepared for battle and well aware that the best form of defence is to attack. He did it in a 20-minute monologue at the start, and then in every reply he gave to questions that followed.

The board was politicised and “shallow”, he said. It had not respected its terms of reference. It had not bothered to look back any further than 2013. It failed to scrutinise the judiciary or the media. And so on and so forth.

Muscat’s snarling offensive was a sure-fire sign that the inquiry had him cornered

Muscat’s snarling offensive was a sure-fire sign that the inquiry had him cornered. Instead of tightening the noose, Muscat was allowed off the leash. The judges – all three esteemed members of the judiciary with years of experience in handling difficult witnesses – took Muscat’s torrent of criticism on the chin, without comment or reprimand. Their silence stood in even starker contrast when compared to the tough-handed approach meted out to other witnesses.

Muscat’s vague answers seemed to be taken at face value, with questions sometimes not followed through.

The Caruana Galizia family’s two lawyers were also disarmed: many of their questions were disallowed by the board, and their political background – both lawyers are also opposition MPs – played right into the hands of Muscat and his attack dog in court, lawyer Pawlu Lia.

Muscat is right in saying that the inquiry has sometimes verged on an “exercise in curiosity”, with some long-winded sittings out of context and of questionable relevance. But while the former prime minister remains a fine orator, his replies on the day were often flimsy and an exercise in deflecting questions.

He admitted to knowing of some business relationship between Yorgen Fenech and Keith Schembri under the dark cloud of 17 Black but seemed to ask no questions about that shady arrangement. He called Fenech a “friend”, then said they had only met eight to 10 times in more than a decade. While he denied the existence of a kitchen cabinet, he did not explain why two of his cabinet ministers had spoken differently.

While the former prime minister remains a fine orator, his replies on the day were often flimsy and an exercise in deflecting questions

He was unable to explain how details from security briefings ended up being leaked to the suspects themselves.

And when he was cornered, Muscat dipped into the old tried-and-tested fallacy of arguing that his predecessors were guilty of the same failings.

If he did nothing on the Panama Papers, well, his predecessor did nothing about the fact one of his MPs had an undeclared Swiss account. If he was close to the Fenechs, well did you know that Eddie Fenech Adami had asked the Tumas Group to help fly an MP to Malta for a crucial vote in 1998?

It was astounding to hear a former prime minister recount how he asked his chief of staff to tell his friend not to flee the country before he was arrested for murder. It was incredible hearing him talk about inviting Fenech, by then a murder suspect, to his birthday party so as to appear to “act normally”. 

Muscat’s performance will have thrilled his supporters and irritated his critics. Nobody, on either side, will have been convinced to change their mind based on what happened on Friday.

But this was not a talent show or football match, with winners and losers. The inquiry’s task is to establish whether the state bears any responsibility for Caruana Galizia’s murder, and to help uncover the truth behind this most heinous of crimes. Muscat’s theatrics – together with the engineered Facebook posts – bring the nation no closer to any of that.