Last week, a vigil was held to remember the late Daphne Caruana Galizia. Thirty-two months have passed since that day, and Malta is still coming to terms with the magnitude of what she had been investigating. The events since her assassination have come close to crippling the country, but it seems like it’s just the beginning. More and more bewildering evidence of the incessant, festering corruption continues to emerge, even 32 months on.

The more time passes, more of the truth is being unearthed. The Labour Party in government was convinced that Daphne was alone in fighting corruption. Their shameless cynicism has let them down. Joseph Muscat and his corrupt cabal thought they might buy and cheat their way out of the law.

Someone somewhere was convinced of either of two things: that blowing up one of Europe’s best investigative journalists would have subdued everyone else into silence, or that everybody else on the island could be bought, bullied, or bargained into complicity, complacency, and compliance with the nation’s most corrupt government ever. Those people couldn’t have been more wrong.

Those who stood for truth and justice in the way of Muscat’s morally bankrupt administration were denounced as traitors. They suffered in the hands of a hate machine designed to suppress free speech and intimidate citizens into submissive silence. When that network of vitriol went underground, the Labour Party did all they could to turn the state’s institutions into extensions of its own criminal organisation to undermine Malta.

The more time passes, the more we know who the real traitors are.

The traitors are those who planted their acolyte as the police commissioner. That ensured complete and utter impunity. No matter how many documents were unearthed, no matter how many e-mails were leaked, no matter how much evidence of serious corruption, financial crime, and murder came to light, Lawrence Cutajar seemed to make sure that no action would ever be taken against the perpetrators.

Keith Schembri loses his phone, and the police are fine with it. Muscat says he has nothing to hide, so he’s left alone. The tables are slowly but surely turning.

Robert Abela has his last chance to choose which side of history he will be on- David Casa

Now, the Montenegro scandal represents the pinnacle of the rot in Castille. Yorgen Fenech’s 17 Black, a hub that implicates Konrad Mizzi, Schembri, and the elusive owner of Egrant Inc, received money from state-led negotiations.

This means state-led negotiations went on to line the pockets of Malta’s most despicable politicians in a generation. And if it transpires that Fenech really mandated the assassination of Caruana Galizia, then Muscat would have been politically responsible for financing the man who sought to protect his bloodied investment with murder.

All with a little help from his friends in Castille.

The more time passes, the more we know to what degree Caruana Galizia’s murder was a state-sponsored assassination.

Robert Abela flailed about with a campaign that promised discontinuity from Muscat’s crooked regime. The thought of another campaign of mass protests hangs like Damocles’ sword over his head. But his response to the recent revelations have been pitiful if he has neglected to give Muscat and Mizzi the boot.

Evidence of clear-cut corruption has emerged. Abela, why aren’t they in cuffs? It seems nothing has changed since the Muscat days. Angelo Gafà, the new police commissioner, has his first real test. Will he be happy with so-called categorical denials issued by crooks? Is a casual plea of innocence now the same as an acquittal?

Abela has his last chance to choose which side of history he will be on. He is fooling nobody by promising he is a new breed of politician than Muscat, whom he advised in cabinet throughout the worst of his regime.

Inevitably, more evidence of treasonous corruption will emerge that will force Abela’s hand if the country he is leading is to be considered a serious democracy.

All that we know about 17 Black and the criminal network that has used it to steal millions from the Maltese taxpayer has been through journalistic investigations and leaks. There are more avenues from where more evidence can and will be obtained.

The only question that remains is whether the Maltese government with Abela at the helm will remain hostage to a disgraced salesman’s gang or whether he will join in to expose the truth in a saga that has been dragging on for far too long, eroding the foundations of Malta’s democracy for each day it did.

More than four years have passed since the Panama Papers story was first broken. It has been too long a fight for the truth behind those shady companies opened by politicians who still sit (or are supposed to sit) in parliament and dodgy accountants who still enjoy government contracts. It isn’t surprising that so many are disillusioned by what’s coming out in the press.

Reports of deep-rooted treachery are now a normal occurrence, but we would do well to remember that they should not be the norm. We cannot give in to apathy and cynicism, not when we are so close to the truth. Because it is not true that Malta has always been this way. We are better than this.

In 2003, we declared victory when Malta voted to become European. Malta voted to wave goodbye to the darker days of corruption and murder. In the years to come, thousands of Maltese patriots worked to make their nation a better place. In seven years, a small corrupt clique has risked undoing all of the work.

But Malta is not the sum of the last seven years. For all we and our forefathers fought for, we will not allow our flag to represent murder and corruption. People of integrity and hard-working citizens and professionals have made Malta what it is, including its economy.

The healthy economy that Muscat saw fit to plunder was not built by him or by the Labour Party, for that matter.

The damage that has been done by Muscat is now worrying top officials of the Labour Party, who only months ago were more than happy to stand by and watch as Malta’s reputation gurgled down the drain.

Only now are they realising the extent of the damage. That is entirely on them.

The real traitors are those who have wrecked Malta to the state of a banana republic. No magic button will undo the harm, but achieving justice is a step towards repairing Malta’s institutions and its democracy.

David Casa is a Nationalist MEP.