For two hundred and eighty weeks we have had to go on without the benefit of your presence, without your unwilling leadership, without the trust you enjoyed of people who knew what was happening to us which you repaid with your life.
You would have chuckled at the irony of the events of the last few days. Sometimes you couldn’t repress yourself and would remind us you had told us so. Don’t be coy. You did tell us so.
You’d be smiling wryly at Steward’s sanctimonious panic. You’d be reminding them that Vitals were better frauds. They knew when to quit, how to run with the money before the heist is busted. You’d teach them the old adage that it’s often a bad idea to attempt to con conmen.
You’d chuckle at the sight of Robert Abela who turned out to be as hollow, as touchy, as vain, and as dangerous as you predicted far before anyone of us imagined he might be prime minister. You’ll hear him talk tough about not paying Steward the stupid money Konrad Mizzi promised them and you’d be right to remind him you had warned him and the country about Konrad Mizzi eight years ago already. You’d make Robert Abela shudder, exposing his hypocrisy, the cowardice of his inconstancy, laughing at him as you watch him chase the mood of the crowd, which mood you have defined.
You’d roll your eyes at Adrian Delia as he studiously avoids acknowledging that the evidence you published before he swore to exorcise you like a demon would be the cure that would, he hopes, rehabilitate him.
Two hundred and eighty weeks have not been enough for Joseph Muscat, the main culprit of the crimes you exposed, to face justice. You’d be expressing mock concern at his pallor, draw ironic maps of the deep furrows on his forehead, recommend he changes his wardrobe again and hand down the clothes of happier days to his sabre toothed wife.
There are many reasons to regret your taking off, but on a week like this, as Joseph Muscat writes frantically on his Facebook page desperately wielding guns and pressing them against the temples of his party bigwigs, we regret not reading your laughter. Hours after you died Joseph Muscat told the world with a smirk on his then relatively fat face that you had been his harshest critic.
He smiled because he thought your game was up. He knew better than anyone how accurate your reporting had been. He knew better than you what he had done. That day when he made a spectacle of promising to catch those who killed you he thought he could breathe easy again.
I can’t believe it’s been 280 weeks. I can’t believe your work of 10 to 6 years ago has still not reached the obvious conclusion of bringing those responsible for the crimes you exposed to justice. There are times when I think of giving up. But then I watch Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela squirm under the heat of your journalism, improvising their spin like children looking away from a broken vase, as if you wrote it this morning.
I would readily give up the satisfaction of their comeuppance to give you a chance to embrace your family again but I cannot do that. I’ll have to make do with the spectacle of Joseph Muscat stumbling under the weight of the irrepressible understanding of what it truly means to leave no stone unturned until the truth is out.
Here’s to the next 280 weeks.