If there are weeks that deserve their own stand-alone page for 2021 and, indeed, for the past decade, the past one must surely have been among them.

The week started with bombshells in court over the involvement of the Office of the Prime Minister in the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia and ended almost fittingly with the man who effectively ran that same office being driven into the prison wards where he is now being held in maximum security.

It’s a week that has shaken Malta to its core. Again. As we have sadly come to expect every few weeks and months now.

In light of the news quite obviously making waves in the European community, the European People’s Party (EPP) Group requested a debate in the European Parliament to discuss the new revelations. And, of course, it did because what goes on in an EU member state affects the entire EU.

And, right on cue, the Labour Party MEPs took issue. In almost comical fashion, these MEPs took turns to out-shout and out-macho each other, saying that any such discussion should and would not take place.

Because, for the Labour Party, crime doesn’t exist if you don’t speak about it. Murder never happened if it is ignored. An assassinated journalist never existed if her memorial is washed away every day and her memory spat on routinely, in line with a smear campaign initiated and run by the same Office of the Prime Minister.

Of those Labour MEPs, the award for the most crass goes to the one who, on the equally crass TV show on the Labour Party’s TV station, said he had a message for us. We would only have the debate on the new revelations in connection to the murder his colleagues are named in “over his dead body”.

His attempt to equate the international scrutiny of our nation in the political union it belongs to as “partisan politics” is mind-numbing. His reference to dead bodies is atrocious. Spoken with the décor of someone representing Europe’s and Malta’s interests abroad.

All this while Keith Schembri and his alleged partners in crime wept in the dock as pages and pages of corruption, money laundering, tax evasion and criminal conspiracy charges were read out to them, following which the magistrate denied them bail. Schembri and his associates sit in prison at this very moment.

There should – and already is – a consensus that what is coming out is condemnable. Like Joseph Muscat before him, Robert Abela is peddling pseudo-patriotism as a façade for well-connected and well-financed crooks. It renders no favours for the country. In the seven years Muscat was in office, Malta has been left worse off, not least reputation-wise.

Abela has simply picked up where his predecessor left off.

Our reputation is in tatters, there’s no two ways about it. And it is in tatters not because citizens in their thousands took to the streets in 2019. Nor is it in tatters because of those who speak out in the face of institutionalised corruption and state-sponsored murder.

To look for those tarnishing Malta’s reputation, you needn’t catch a flight to Brussels. Take a bus to Valletta instead- David Casa

It is in tatters because those who have a mandate to make sure this doesn’t happen are allowing it all to go on right under their noses.

When Abela picked up the pieces of Muscat’s disastrous administration last year, the priorities were clear.

First, Malta’s institutions needed strengthening through independence and competence, not interference.

Second, Malta’s reputation needed rebuilding through transparency and goodwill, not partisan finger-pointing, cover-ups and arrogant chest-puffing.

Third, Malta’s democracy needed truth and justice through swift action and strong leadership, not vain calls for unity as whitewash.

Those values are essential to any democracy, let alone one that was left weaker after all the abuse it endured. Since Abela assumed office, little has been done to move away from a form of patriotism that glorifies murder and robbery.

Resignations came and indictments followed but the problems remained the same. The same narratives that were being spun in the dark aftermath of October 2017 are still here. It’s not that they have resurfaced. It’s that they never left the public sphere.

And, yet, there are calls for unity in the midst of incessant scandals. No less, they are being propagated by the same people sowing divides to cover up the rot in public life, the same ones accusing me of treason.

The Labour Party would have everyone believe that only it has Malta’s interests at heart.

It takes a great deal of delusion to convince anyone that the honest citizen benefits from letting criminals off the hook. However, this is the narrative that Muscat pushed and this is the narrative that Abela is delivering.

It is baffling why there are still so many who are actively resisting seeking a just end to this dark chapter of Malta’s history. But until we get there, we are right to seek as much transparency as possible.

The Maltese people deserve the truth, and that can only come about with transparency. Shoving the government line down our throats falls way short of this.

That is why we need a debate in the European Parliament.

To look for those tarnishing Malta’s reputation, you needn’t catch a flight to Brussels. Take a bus to Valletta instead.

David Casa is a Nationalist Party MEP.