After the arrests - Ranier Fsadni

What should Monday’s arrests change for the government’s law and order critics, assuming the arrests will lead to successful prosecutions for Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination?

A lot, if you’ve spent the last seven weeks playing an armchair Sherlock and getting it wrong. Nothing, if you haven’t. If, that is, the basis of your criticism has been that the assassination was an illustration of how growing institutional deterioration, for partisan advantage, can have hideous consequences.

Weak institutions need not always lead to murder but they do lead to fewer restraints on criminals. And that always has nasty consequences.

You might need reminding of all that if you watched Joseph Muscat’s press conference on Monday. While saying nothing, he exuded everything: law and order does exist in Malta, and I’m on top of it. Everything is under control.

That piece of political theatre works in Muscat’s favour, if you always conflated criminal responsibility for the crime with political responsibility for the amplified risks Caruana Galizia was exposed to. It also works in Muscat’s favour if you’re Adrian Delia, and you allowed yourself to be bamboozled into declaring, a day before the...