Labour media, Labour trolls, and generic Simon-Busuttil-haters across the political aisle are celebrating as a victory Judge Antonio Mizzi’s decision not to recuse himself from hearing his wife’s boss’s appeal from a lower court decision to investigate allegations of his crimes.

That fact alone is both predictable and shocking. It both confirms every single expectation Simon Busuttil’s request to Judge Antonio Mizzi tried to address and the inevitable doubt of the due process of justice.

The Chief Justice in his earth-moving speech of yesterday did not take this farce into account. The Chief Justice’s point was that no one should expect the courts to bring justice about if the police and the attorney general fail in their duty. Fair point but not quite enough.

Here we have a clear case where the attorney general and the police failed to act. Joseph Muscat and his gang smiled as they washed their bloody hands in cool water poured for them by Peter Grech and Lawrence Cutajar.

So Simon Busuttil resorted to the safeguard provided for in the law for just these circumstances. He asked the court to order Peter Grech and Lawrence Cutajar to get off their velvet cushions and do their jobs.

Who, apart from Peter Grech and Lawrence Cutajar, most benefits if Peter Grech and Lawrence Cutajar do not do their jobs? Why, who else but Joseph Muscat and his gang? And sure enough they went to a higher court to ask that the order to have them investigated is thrown out.

They timed their appeal so that the husband of one of Joseph Muscat’s MEPs gets his turn as duty judge. Simon Busuttil reminded Judge Antonio Mizzi that no matter his good will, his obvious association with Labour and its leadership will not allow anyone to believe justice is being served.

Now do please take this into the context of the Chief Justice’s speech from yesterday. The courts are helpless to initiate criminal action against anyone. They can only judge who’s brought in front of them. The issue Judge Antonio Mizzi needs to decide on is whether what the Chief Justice is complaining has not been happening, needs to happen now.

The Chief Justice warned us the judiciary is the last bulwark left to protect justice and the rule of law in this country. And here we are faced by a judiciary that seems to have stopped trying to look neutral and above the political motivations and machinations that plague this republic.

When Lawrence Cutajar failed to act, Joseph Muscat’s fans celebrated. When Peter Grech failed to act, Joseph Muscat’s fans celebrated. They are celebrating all over Facebook today because Antonio Mizzi has decided he should be the one to decide whether Lawrence Cutajar and Peter Grech should be made to act.

There was one point the Chief Justice reminded us all of yesterday. When criminals are allowed to get away with it because the institutions of the state are so rotten as to be powerless in the fight on crime, an injustice is perpetrated on each and every one of us.

If we cannot be persuaded that the decisions of judges are not politically motivated, we are entitled to question them and criticise them. It is an unhappy state of affairs that we have come to. It has come to this.