The political cleavage that seems to be everlasting in Malta is that between those who believe in open government guided by modern European values and those who treat the government as a fiefdom, akin to their private property.

Four years ago, Joseph Muscat seemed to have crossed this cleavage, and we thought he had managed to drag his party away from its old autocratic instincts to being a European social-democratic party. We thought we were in for a period of normal politics in a ‘European’ Malta.

We were betrayed.

For we now know that, on the very morrow of taking the oath of office in March 2013, Konrad Mizzi and Muscat’s right-hand man, Keith Schembri, started opening secret companies in Panama. This was their very first act in government, and the shape of things to come.

After four years, Muscat’s main electoral planks of accountability, transparency and meritocracy are a distant echo in the noise of a veritable cacophony of scandals. Accountability, transparency and meritocracy were words coined to dress Muscat in European fashion. But today, the emperor has no clothes, save for a Panama hat.

After 15 years in Opposition, Muscat’s party should have hit the ground running to implement its vision for Malta. But we now know that its vision was firmly trained on Panama.

Transparency International confirmed that Muscat’s government is the most corrupt ever. He sits on a mountain of scandals that have eroded public trust in the entire political class.

A good number of these scandals may well have been conceived before the election itself, in-between his well-rehearsed speeches on transparency.

Last week we witnessed how Muscat’s idea of transparency is to publish black-out versions of the power station contracts. In tearing them up in Parliament, I wished to express the people’s anger at having their intelligence insulted in this brazen manner.

Muscat has given positions of trust to hundreds of people, many of whom we now know are in fictitious jobs, to plunder hard-working people’s taxes.

We need a new government that can clean up this mess and that is truly committed to serve the country and the people,rather than itself

With Mizzi’s wife continuing in her post ‘earning’ €13,000 a month, any semblance of control by Muscat has long gone and he is obviously now a hostage, an accomplice, or both.

In a European country with the slightest hint of accountability, the Prime Minister would be carrying his political responsibility. Instead, his government organises a barrage of lies about the Opposition, just so that people can say: “Oh well, they’re all the same, so let’s stick with Muscat.”

A case in point: When the Panama scandal exploded last year, Muscat’s media unleashed a savage attack on Beppe Fenech Adami amid a cloud of murky allegations about his personal residence.

In a landmark decision against Muscat’s party TV station, the court found that it was all lies.

And while they train their guns on those of us who stand up to them, Muscat’s cronies are pillaging everything in sight, from blue stickers to minibars. When they’re cornered, they lie through their teeth or simply run out of the emergency exit. When they do not even have an emergency exit from which to escape, they go for the axe and slash away at anyone who dares to unmask them. Far from a ‘culture of resignations’, Muscat gave us the freezing of a journalist’s bank accounts.

To boot, last week they presented a new Press Act that is an affront to the very basic rights of freedom of expression and internet freedom, pitting us with the likes of Iran and Bangladesh in limiting internet freedom.

We are all paying for this state of affairs, through higher taxes on fuel, new excise taxes on everyday goods and less-than-adequate public services, especially health services. While Muscat’s two closest men open three secret companies in Panama, people are barely seeing their wages and pensions rise, at least with inflation.

While Muscat’s cronies line their pockets, poverty increases, and an alarming number of people are finding it difficult to pay for decent accommodation.

Our country – yours and mine – deserves much better.

We need to claim our country back.

We need a new government that can clean up this mess and that is truly committed to serve the country and the people, rather than itself.

Let us all join hands and do this together. And let us start with our march for democracy and freedom this afternoon in Valletta.

Simon Busuttil is leader of the Nationalist Party.