It’s not because he spoke of his electorate in offensive terms, describing the average Labour Party supporter as an imbecile. They’re right to feel hurt but they can deal with that when it’s their turn to vote in the next election.

Edward Zammit Lewis had his Ġaħan conversation with a person he described and continues to describe as his “friend” Yorgen Fenech. He may have not suspected his “friend” killed a journalist.

Though God knows how he can bring himself even now to defend his friendship with Yorgen Fenech to TV cameras  without expressing mortifying regret that his “friend” is reasonably suspected of having killed a journalist.

But even if, for a brief moment, the killed-a-journalist detail is parked, Edward Zammit Lewis had no reason to avoid the universal suspicion that the owner of 17 Black, whom Edward Zammit Lewis knew like everybody else by then Yorgen Fenech to be, was a systemic briber of politicians.

That means either Edward Zammit Lewis was himself being bribed by Yorgen Fenech (for which he must resign and face criminal consequences) or he was perfectly happy to be a “friend” of a businessman who bribed his colleagues (for which he must resign and seriously consider therapy).

All those are good reasons for him to resign or be fired. But I promised the top reason and none of these are it.

The top reason for Edward Zammit Lewis’s resignation or dismissal is that Edward Zammit Lewis, without being as candid then as he had to become after his exquisitely tender Whatsapp chats with Yorgen Fenech were exposed along with his friendship to the (alleged) journalist-killer and politician-briber, stood in Parliament to seek to obstruct the process of determining the truth about the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The truth about the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia hurt the interests of his “friend” Yorgen Fenech. The truth about the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia was determined by an independent inquiry that declared itself satisfied it has seen sufficient evidence to conclude that Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed because her investigations and findings and reporting into the Electrogas scandal hurt the interests of those interested in seeing it happen.

That’s a lot of people. It’s most prominently his “friend” Yorgen Fenech who (is alleged to have) bribed ministers to get the contract and who (is alleged to have) killed a journalist to cover that (alleged) fact up.

It is supremely ironic that the Minister for Justice of today had done this. He stood in Parliament to object to even the idea of having an independent inquiry to ask whether the State had been responsible for Daphne Caruana Galizia’s killing. He wasn’t Minister for Justice then. He was a Member of Parliament, in breach of the most basic rule of Parliamentary conduct, to speak always and only in the interest of the public he represents, not in his own personal interest or, as was this case, in the interest of his unnamed and undeclared friends.

Watch this video from December 2018. This is the top reason why Edward Zammit Lewis must go, not just from the government but from Parliament altogether.

MPs who obstruct justice when it crawls towards their friends have no place in public life. Not in a democracy that doesn’t give killers the idea that they can kill journalists with impunity. Not in the democracy we want.

And that’s on behalf of all the Ġaħan Edward Zammit Lewis is so disdainful of, even the Ġaħan that still support him and can’t think why.