Hot on the heels of Silvio Schembri yet again telling us more things we didn’t need to know in the form of stating that it was not him who allegedly had sexual relations with Yorgen Fenech, we’ve had what can only be described as a disaster of an appearance in court by former head of the police force’s Economic Crimes Unit Ian Abdilla.

I don’t know if you’ve had time to read the live blog of what was said in court, but if you haven’t, then it truly is high time you took five minutes out of your day and did. During the inquiry, Abdilla does not only say that he used Daphne Caruana Galizia’s blog to look up pieces of information that would aid his investigations (not bad for a ‘biċċa blogger’ who according to the party machine was only good at spewing out hate), but he also answers questions about the Panama Papers, or to put it more succinctly, he leaves no one in any doubt that not enough was done to investigate them properly. If ever there was a transcript of all that is wrong in the way the institutions function in this country, it would be this.

People in our most important roles seem to have been hand-picked based on their ability to look away or simply stand by quietly as things fell apart- Anna Marie Galea

It’s truly chilling when you think about it. Here you had literally one woman and a small number of other individuals uncovering scandals and investigating leads that were getting blacker by the day and on the other side, we have our former head of the Economic Crimes Unit with infinitely more resources picking and choosing what he should tackle next from the blog and then deciding that it would somehow not be relevant to interview Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri about the Panama Papers. No wonder the judges practically laughed in his face. Forget the part where he was told he was living in a parallel universe; he’s practically living in an entirely different solar system.

With every passing day, I find myself becoming increasingly numb to the constant barrage of hideous news and deeply concerned about where we are meant to go from here. It’s been less than a decade, but I’m astounded at what our disgraced former prime minister and his band of brothers were allowed to achieve and how effective they were in making our institutions impotent, gormless and foolish.

People in our most important roles seem to have been hand-picked based on their ability to look away or simply stand by quietly as things fell apart. People whose job it was to protect us and, more importantly, protect the State, did not only fiddle as Rome burned but they coaxed the fire along by ignoring it completely. This cannot be allowed to continue.

I urge Prime Minister Abela to look again at the people he has chosen to surround himself with and truly look at their actions. I urge him to re-examine all the jobs which have been given out so liberally in the last few years and to make sure that the institutions truly can work with these people in place. To do anything less would be to signal complacency and complicity. We cannot continue to allow people to make a mockery of our institutions and occupy roles they are clearly far from fit to carry out. What more proof is needed? The whole world is waiting for us to make our next move and make no mistake, the country will pay for our negligence.

There are still crooks everywhere you look now. The situation remains desperate.