On Monday afternoon, I had just finished reading Daphne Caruana Galizia’s last post.

It was about a court sitting, held in the morning, in a libel case filed against me by the Prime Minister’s chief of staff after I publicly denounced him when he was caught red-handed with a secret company in Panama, along with Minister Konrad Mizzi.

I was reflecting on her concluding sentence – “There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate” – when the first news shot in.

Online portals were reporting an explosion involving a car in Bidnija. I froze.

Moments later the phone rang.

“What happened?” I demanded, ditching all formalities, “Is it Daphne?”

“It could be,” came the unconvincing reply, “but we’re not sure yet.”

Barely a few minutes later, the confirmation came through.

And that’s when everything changed.

Daphne was gone.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

When the editor of The Sunday Times of Malta asked me to write a tribute for Daphne, I accepted instantly, before even considering that, knowing what Daphne thought of the political class in Malta, a tribute from a politician was probably the last thing she would have wanted.

Indeed, never have I felt so embarrassed to be part of this political world. Much as I have always felt proud to be one of the people’s representatives in my brief four years as a Member of the Maltese Parliament, never have I felt so uncomfortable to sit in the House of Representatives as this week.

Because the political system that has been allowed to rot so badly has failed Daphne and has failed us all.

Because the corrupt mentality that has been allowed to flourish has corroded the very fabric of our society.

Yet, as a politician, I shared much of Daphne’s outlook on good governance and the fight against corruption. In fact, this was my political platform as PN leader before last June’s election. And that is still what I stand for.

The last time I communicated with Daphne, earlier this month, she was enquiring, in her usual no-nonsense style, whether I would, now that I was no longer party leader, keep up my legal battle in court to get a criminal investigation to start on Panama Papers. In court, my fight for justice was, and is still, finding the vicious resistance of the Prime Minister and his friends every step of the way.

Rest assured, I will fight on, I told her, even if deep down I felt that my energy to fight this rotten system had begun to wane.

It is a consolation for me that, at least, she died in the knowledge that someone was going to keep up the fight. To be sure, her brutal assassination has re-energised my resolve and filled me with renewed passion and determination to fight on.

It is the standards that she expected of those of us in public life that will remain her lasting legacy

I have often been accused of letting her Running Commentary dictate my agenda. Nothing could be further from the truth. We simply shared the same outlook on the need for good governance.

But yes, we did have a professional relationship based on mutual respect, including the respect of the boundaries of each other’s job. She knew that she could not tell me what to do just as much as I knew that I could not tell her what to write. Which means that we communicated much less frequently than most people think.

Through her inimitable and controversial style of writing, Daphne told us very bluntly what kind of country she wanted Malta to be: a normal country. That was an idea, an ideal, that I shared.

But her acerbic and often tabloid portrayal of politicians and people in public office, which at times dug into their personal lives, also communicated clearly the standards that she expected of us.

So it is the standards that she expected of those of us in public life that will remain her lasting legacy.

She expected complete loyalty to the oath of public office, including true autonomy of those leading public institutions, deeply resenting political interference and nepotism.

She expected competence of the highest order and often wrote about those of us she felt were not fit for office.

She expected integrity beyond reproach, dedicating much of her recent years to a fearless journalistic crusade against corruption.

She expected decency, honesty and honour and she spared no column inches to tell us what she thought of cheats, of hypocrites and of manipulators.

She expected accountability from all of us, to shoulder responsibility for what we do wrong and for what goes wrong under our political responsibility.

Fundamentally, she expected us to allow her to live in a normal country, which we did not. And now we know that we definitely do not. This is where we have failed her in the most horrific manner.

We are all collectively responsible, as a state and as nation, for having failed her. Yet, clearly, those who led the country to this sorry state of affairs are the ones most responsible and must resign now.

We can never bring Daphne back. Her assassination makes the situation indeed desperate.

The only thing now is for us to search our hearts and souls to see what each and every one of us can do to make sure that she has not died in vain.