Malta’s PM announces he will stand down as national crisis deepens

The embattled prime minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat, has resigned, as the the national crisis over the murder of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia intensifies.

Speaking on television, Muscat said he would step down in the new year and that the ruling Labour Party would begin the process to choose his successor on 12 January.

According to The Guardian, protesters gathered on the streets for Muscat’s address, “marking the conclusion of an emotional and angry demonstration” demanding the PM’s immediate resignation over the inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s death.

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The investigative journalist, who had exposed corruption at the highest level in Muscat’s government, was killed in October 2017 after a bomb planted under the driver’s seat of her hire car exploded while she was travelling away from her home in the village of Bidnija.

CNN reports that in what was to be the final entry on her blog Running Commentary, she wrote: “There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.” She had filed a police report 15 days before saying she was being threatened.

On Saturday, Malta’s richest man, the property and gambling tycoon Yorgen Fenech, was charged with Galizia’s murder. Investigators have uncovered links between Fenech and Keith Schembri, who until last week was Muscat’s chief of staff.

According to The Times of Malta, there was this week calls during a six-hour meeting of Muscat’s cabinet for an investigation into Schembri.

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In his resignation speech, Muscat expressed “deep regret” for Caruana Galizia’s murder and spoke of the need for a “fresh page”. “The sensations of genuine sadness and anger for this murder are justified”, he said.

“In the same manner, violence, and disorder, within the pretext of a protest, are not justified in a democracy. This case cannot define everything that our country is.”

The Guardian said that though Muscat’s departure brings to an end his seven-year term as the leader of the European Union’s smallest member state, “it is unlikely to draw a line under the scandal engulfing his administration”.

In 2017, Galizia’s family raised concerns over the police probe into her killing, which is being overseen by an officer married to a government minister who was once the focus of critical articles by the journalist.