What’s next? Cement shoes?

These guys don’t learn anything, do they?

It’s not enough to have Moneyval breathing down your neck with the threat of serious economic harm should greylisting trigger an exodus of international business and cause any remaining potential US dollar correspondent banks to slam the door closed.

It’s not enough to have the Council of Europe and the Venice Commission grumbling about shoddy justice reforms rushed through in a dog’s breakfast of improvised solutions riddled with deliberate loopholes that do little to address the concerns these organisations raised— chiefly all that power concentrated in the hands of the prime minister.

Electing an under-qualified incompetent with an over-inflated ego would be bad enough. But the risk becomes existential when a Kink takes power with a fully formed plan to drain the national coffers and then slink away.

It should be cause for concern that one of Malta’s most reliable source of income — EU funding— is edging closer to restrictions tied to a country’s adherence to the Union’s collective values and the rule of law.

Practically every new ‘business’ Joseph Muscat brought to Malta relied on dirty money, dodgy countries, and the sort of underhanded behaviour that made this proud nation a European pariah in just a few years.

You’ve now become so dependent on selling EU passports for cash that parliamentary secretary for citizenship Alex Muscat refused to shut the programme down in defiance of infringement proceedings launched by the European Commission.

‘Europe’s criticism is just political,’ he claims. Malta has every right to prostitute your citizenship to any rich John willing to hand over the cash. It’s just too bad that your red passport gives them full rights in 27 other countries.

No one — inside Malta or out — is under the delusion that the global elite is paying all that money to live on an overcrowded rock.

A clash is coming here, too. And it’s a fight Malta isn’t going to win. Whatever goodwill you had was squandered long ago.

All of these things — and more — are lined up against you at a time when the global economy is staggering under what may become the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

And now Continuity Bob is determined to pick a fight with the public inquiry.

“The board has taken upon itself the right to extend its deadline indefinitely”, and so “the board has to assume responsibility for its decisions and its consequences.”

This is the way mafia dons speak.

Asked about his government’s official statement the next day, Abela said it wasn’t a threat.

“Nowhere did the statement refer to ‘consequences” he claimed. “The statement spoke of ‘responsibilities’ and the ‘significance’”.

It sounds a lot like Egrant, doesn’t it? Muscat used a similar statement to the press to tell Aaron Bugeja in no uncertain terms it would be “the magistrate’s problem” if things didn’t turn out well for il-Kink, and the magistrate would have to carry the responsibility for it.

Cue the bottom-feeding Neville Gafa in the corner to mutter, “Stop your dirty business. If not, we will be stopping you.”

First, they threaten and insist the public inquiry is shut down, prompting outrage from Repubblika, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom and press freedom NGOs around the world. Now the prime minister says he won’t commit to respecting the inquiry’s conclusions — well, presumably not unless he gets another inconclusive brick of a report mired in dangling ‘allegations’ and investigative dead ends.

“Given that the board has taken the decision to extend,” he said, “one will have to see when the report is handed over.”

I wonder who “one” is? Is it Bobby or his boss?

The more things change, the more they stay the same. There’s continuity for you.

Labour’s already cranked up its propaganda machine to seed the narrative that the inquiry’s been politicised — made partisan — and it’s all just red against blue, and big countries bullying a small country.

No need to worry about what they find, it’ll obviously be biased. Let’s just pretend the economy’s great — and blame all the fallout headed your way on the pandemic.

That tired line might play well to Bobby’s Party-blind followers, but it isn’t fooling anyone else.

The murder that shocked Europe — and that made headline news from Canada to Japan — isn’t going away, no matter how much they stall, avoid, and lie on the witness stand, pointing fingers at others and contradicting one another more often than Keith Schembri contradicted his pal Joe.

This government is playing for very high stakes, and they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore.

The public inquiry was tasked with finding out whether the State could have prevented Daphne Caruana Galizia’s brutal murder.

This doesn’t seem to be the question anymore. Now we’re wondering how deeply the government was involved in the killing and in covering it up.

The longer the public inquiry goes on, the more obvious it is that they have everything to lose — and that makes them dangerous.