A few days ago, the world remembered the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the wall of hate that divided Germany and Europe, that separated families and friends, that killed people yearning to embrace loved ones under the clear sky of freedom.

I remember my 18-year-old self, watching transfixed on a Mintoffian era black and white television set as floods of people overwhelmed their tyrants and brought down the wall with chisels, hammers, pick axes and even with their own bare hands.

The bare hands hacking away at the wall reminded me of the people who dig with their hands hoping to find loved ones under rubble, hoping against hope that they are found alive and reunited.

Hope. It makes one do extraordinary things.

Human beings are wired on hope. Every person pulling down the wall had harboured secret hopes of freedom.

Some put their hope in action, tried to make a dash for freedom and were killed. Others saved themselves but left loved ones behind. Others were resigned to their fate.

Then, a sudden catalyst and the private wish became a heaving, pulsating collective that pushed for what was hitherto unthinkable. And life was never the same again.

When Mikhail Gorbachev was asked who he regarded as the main hero of that time of drama and turmoil, he replied “the people”. Always the people.

The people were also the hero a year ago when we took to the streets demanding accountability from the government for its role in the assassination of its fiercest critic, Daphne Caruana Galizia.

But the mobilisation of the people did not happen overnight. It took a small number of determined people who every 16th day of the month reminded the government that, no matter how many times Joseph Muscat says that he is working serenely, life could not just go on.

For months, we endured jeers and taunts and even pity, the latter from some family and friends. Muscat seemed invincible.

The figure of the 40,000 vote majority the Labour Party obtained at the 2017 general election, in spite of the Panama Papers story, was thrown at us continually.

But we dug our heels in. Because water hollows a stone not by force but by dripping persistently. After all it was a small stone that brought down Goliath, was it not?

Throughout our history, the Maltese people have always made their voice heard during national crises. In the past, large crowds were mobilised by political parties and the Church. Last year, the protests were called by civil society.

Hope is what we are made of. Having got so far, we cannot give up now- Alessandra Dee Crespo

We knew that the majority of the population did not support our protests. Muscat knew that had he called for a snap election he would still have won it with a large margin.

But Muscat also knew that these protests were different. They were endorsed by the independent media and other NGOs and entities.

Foreign media houses decamped to Malta to report that people from all social backgrounds came together determined to boot out Muscat because his parliamentary group would not, so we bloody well had to do it ourselves.

This is not an exercise in nostalgia or, even worse, a self-congratulatory piece. We are not sitting on our laurels. There is still work to be done.

There is still work to be done when Prime Minister Robert Abela, who was elected on the pledge of continuity with his kingmaker, Muscat, still brazenly protects the corrupt legacy of the OCCRP 2019 Person of the Year for Corruption and Organised Crime.

There is still work to be done when Muscat and his lieutenants, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi, and others whose gross dereliction of duty facilitated the assassination of a journalist, still roam free.

There is still work to be done when government ministers and officials still lie through their teeth or have convenient bouts of amnesia, or have uncontrollable urges to indulge in revisionist history on the stand when facing a panel of judges in court.

There is still work to be done when independent journalists are still targeted for holding power to account not only by trolls but also by the government itself, naturally having learnt no lessons from the dehumanisation and assassination of a journalist.

Hope. It’s a potent drug.

So, when you feel discouraged by the seemingly endless revolving doors at the police headquarters, remember that, this time last year,  they came undone.

No one thought that the self-styled ‘Invictus’ would be gone; that Schembri would resign and would be looking over his shoulder to see if anyone is looking at him using his ‘lost’ mobile; that Mizzi would be thrown out of the Labour Party and that Muscat would be replaced by another prime minister who is as cunning as Baldrick without the benefit of Blackadder as buffer.

Hope. It’s what we are made of.

Having got so far, we cannot give up now. We must continue to hack away at the wall of impunity that gives them all the false security of invincibility.

Hubris. Muscat knows about it but Abela still needs to have his reckoning.

Hunger. We still hunger for justice. If you do too, you can still join this fight for truth and justice and, if we get tired, somewhere beyond right or wrong, there is a garden. We can all meet there.

But, then, we must continue because, years from now, our children will celebrate the fall of the wall of impunity.

Alessandra Dee Crespo is president-elect of Repubblika.