A government statement issued on Tuesday about a public inquiry into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed its "state of panic" about proceedings there, political party ADPD said on Wednesday. 

"The mafia state is showing its true colours through PM Robert Abela's brazen intimidation of the members that compose the same inquiry," the party said.

"It is clear that we have a puppet government and a puppet prime minister which are controlled by the interests of the same mafia state."

The party was reacting to a cryptically-worded government statement issued on Tuesday evening, in which it said that the board of inquiry would have to assume responsibility for its decisions and their consequences, now that it had taken it upon itself to extend the inquiry's deadline and its terms of reference. 

The board of inquiry is made up of three judges, Michael Mallia, Joseph Said Pullicino and Abigail Lofaro. 

ADPD said that an inquiry set up to investigate the role the state and state-sponsored actors played in a journalist's murder "is now being publicly attacked by the same state under inquiry."

It invited the government to abide by the same terms of reference of the public inquiry and said it held the government and the Prime Minister accountable to its statement that the public board of inquiry is independent.

The inquiry was meant to be concluded in September but the prime minister had granted it a one-off extension to Tuesday.

However, on Monday, the judges said they needed more time to conclude their work, and that the inquiry would continue past the new deadline.

They pointed out they needed to know about the findings of data from electronic devices analysed by Europol which will become available in January.