The Shape of Water is the title of Andrea Camilleri’s first Inspector Montalbano murder mystery. Early on, when the corpse turns up, it’s explained why anyone’s death – no matter how natural or unnatural – is like water.

Water has no shape of its own. It takes the shape of its container. Likewise, any death reveals the shape of the society in which it took place. Institutions need to respond to a death. How they do that reveals a social estimate of individual life. It also reveals what we expect of those institutions.

Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination a year ago reveals a lot about the shape of the cultural goldfish bowl we’re swimming in. But to see it all, we need to split the series of events into two.

First, there is the pre-assassination period. You could take this period all the way back to when Caruana Galizia began to write – three decades of anonymous notes, killed dogs, arson, partisan intimidation and scapegoating. But that would be unfair.

It would be unfair to a former police commissioner who, despite Caruana Galizia refusing police protection outside her home, overrode her judgment. He made sure that there were frequent patrols in the vicinity.

It would be unfair to the Nationalist politicians who refused to “condemn” her or “dissociate” themselves from her – despite the insistence by their Labour adversaries, some of their own Nationalist supporters, and certain self-styled liberal commentators. And despite the fact that there was no discernible association between the PN and the columnist who sometimes turned her fire on its leaders, including during the most awkward of times.

These politicians understood the gravity of men of power condemning and dissociating themselves from a lone independent journalist. For that condemnation could easily be misunderstood to mean that if anything happened to her – as many things already had – they would not care so much.

In the last few months and weeks of her life, she was indeed condemned widely, including now by some Nationalist politicians. And, for some time, the current Police Commissioner had taken her at her word and not provided the patrols she previously had.

It is reasonable to suspect that this situation – reduced police protection, widespread public dissociation, and no strong public voice of support – contributed to create an environment in which whoever wanted her dead could reasonably think they stood a better chance of murdering her and getting away with it.

You’d think that, given the reasonable suspicion, everyone would be pressing for a public inquiry into how much of the assassination was actually enabled by the display of incompetence and irresponsibility that took away what cover she had.

But we’re not. Instead we’re being told this would interfere with the murder investigation. But why should it? The government and the police have already excluded that anyone in authority or politics was involved.

As soon as the initial shock subsided, we saw a systemic concerted campaign, that included MPs and public officials, to portray Daphne Caruana Galizia as aggressor

You can’t have it both ways. If a public inquiry into political responsibility for her vulnerability interferes with an investigation into criminal responsibility for the assassination, that can only be because you’re allowing that those politically responsible may be in league with the assassins. If you rule that possibility out, then there should be no overlap.

Some respond that Caruana Galizia was to blame for her own murder. She’s the one who refused protection. And she’s the one, it’s said, who should have taken the necessary security measures given that she wasso harsh and ‘hateful’ with so many people.

For the sake of argument, let’s go along with the idea that she was an unpleasant hate-blogger (though not once was she legally charged with hate speech). Is this an argument that’s supposed to defend the integrity of Maltese society and its State? Really?

It presupposes the State has no responsibility to protect you if you recklessly misjudge your own risks. You’re on your own. It also presupposes that if you’re doing something that is protected by law (free speech) but unpleasant, you shouldn’t be surprised, nor should your family complain, if people take the law into their own hands against you. Being unpleasant makes you a second-class citizen.

So much for free speech, equality before the law, rule of law, and the State’s duties to protect its citizens against crime.

All this is what preceded the assassination. Completely separable is what came after it.

Let’s assume we haven’t even begun to suspect who the people who commissioned her murder are. Let’s assume they have nothing to do with politics. Even then, the behaviour of our institutions has been extraordinary.

As soon as the initial shock subsided, we saw a systemic concerted campaign, that included MPs and public officials, to portray the victim as aggressor.

Her sons were for a short while people whose anger and distrust was understandable. Then they became enemies of the State.

That’s not hyperbole. In Parliament, one Labour MP even said that the sons hate Malta so much they would rather see its name blackened than see justice done for their mother.

The international press also underwent a remarkable transformation courtesy of spin. From the body the government welcomed to cover Malta’s EU presidency, it became a cabal of dupes and agents of fellow member states envious of Malta’s success.

It’s astonishing how hardened journalists, able to see beyond the self-serving propaganda of powerful men around the world, are blinded by Maltese amateur activists. Amazing how journalists renown for holding their own governments to account suddenly became lackeys of those same governments.

Most jaw-dropping of all is how a Maltese government that is expert in shaping national public opinion couldn’t convince a few journalists of its case. Instead of opening itself up to the international press, it avoided them.

In fact, every step it took could have been expressly designed to remind these journalists, used to reporting on Putin and Mugabe, of cover-ups they’ve seen elsewhere.

Maybe all this is simply a result of gross incompetence, of failure to understand the gravity of the assassination of a journalist, of underestimating the weight of politicians’ words. Maybe all concerned are doing their best to protect Malta’sreputation. But if the Maltese nation-state has friends like these, who needs traitors?

ranierfsadni@europe.com

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece