In the wake of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination, a national consensus has emerged. Whatever you think about her worst side, she was at her best when her fierce intuition and relentlessness were disciplined by detailed facts – facts that told dirty stories she was unafraid to shout out loud in defiance of the danger and the threats.

It was her best side that got her killed. She was killed for being the best. And now it’s her best side that is bringing the worst out of the authorities.

Step by step, tableau by tableau, as procedure took its course, the authorities lined up to leave us aghast.

There was the callous magistrate who, just after the assassination, left the grieving family of her old foe waiting for hours outside her office. A magistrate who’s a reminder why public trust in the independence of the judiciary has been sliding since 2013.

There was the Police Commissioner, first missing, then flubbing, in action. An icon of why faith in the police is plummeting.

There was the Prime Minister, protesting he had been more sinned against than sinning, not caring that we know that his communications aide ran a blog that demonised her; as did, for long years, the Labour machine he was at the heart of.

It was a cynical performance worthy of the Opposition leader, suddenly Daphne’s champion after a summer of barking her name with disdain, and who realised only shortly before Sunday’s mass demonstration that his presence would be insensitive.

It’s because of such casual cynicism that public trust in politicians has tumbled a breathtaking 31 places (according to the Global Competitiveness Index) over the past two years.

And yet, despite this obscene spectacle, we are being told what we can and cannot feel about Daphne’s assassination.

Shock is good. It shows a nation united. Anger is bad. It is divisive. It prevents healing. Identifying fault raises suspicions about the authenticity of your feelings.

No one who’s angry is above suspicion, not even Daphne’s children. Throughout the spectacle of public grief, confusion and play-acting, they have been a beacon of astounding lucidity. Nothing they have said is exaggeration.

And yet Labour’s apologists are out to discredit them. If Matthew, Andrew and Paul Caruana Galizia will not accept that they are being ‘emotional’ – when they demand political accountability – then they cannot be truly grieving their mother.

They are not being good sons. Their tears have dried too quickly. They have switched too soon ‘to politicise’ their mother’s regrettable death.

This obscene spin is being repeated (on the social media and even in an opinion piece in this newspaper) in spite of the several descriptions, by the international press that has interviewed them, of three young men who look shell-shocked, sleepless and red-eyed.

Daphne’s boys look like they’re well able to take care of themselves. It’s the rest of us I’m worried about

Daphne’s boys look like they’re well able to take care of themselves. It’s the rest of us I’m worried about.

There is relentless institutional pressure to tell us that our anger is exaggerated or in bad faith or counter-productive. There is a good chance that many will cave in unless we truly understand, not just feel, that our anger is right. That without it there will be no healing, no unity.

First, there is the accusation that the anger is exaggerated and in bad faith. Why no such fuss when the other car-bombs exploded? Where was the politics, then?

Actually, Daphne did make a fuss about them. And she did underline the political context, a growing institutional failure that was permitting organised crime to spread.

And when a bomb went off with other cars around, the political context did make sense to a few people, who could see that, but for the grace of God, they might have been driving right beside the car that blew up.

But if we paid no attention then, or did but then forgot, does that mean we have no right to recognise institutional failure now that the point has sunk in?

Second, there is the accusation that the anger exaggerates the institutional failure. Law and order have not broken down. Do we not feel safe at night? Do we not go to work as usual? Do we still not litigate before the courts?

Well, if by law and order you mean the kind of thing a tourist looks for, then yes, we have it. If you’re considering the forces in charge of law and order, then what we get is a picture of year-on-year deterioration.

The Global Competitiveness Index, for which institutional strength matters, tallies with popular impressions and anecdotes. It marks an improvement (around 10 places) in our general competitiveness over the last four years. But it also has worrying signals of decline in public institutions.

Trust in the police has slid down six places since 2012-13. On spread of organised crime, we’ve gone down five places.

On the independence of the judiciary, we’ve tumbled 16 places. Perhaps that’s because so many of the new judges and magistrates were plucked straight from the partisan arena, where public trust has fallen 31 places in the last two years.

So the rot is there. And Daphne’s best work charted the causes and consequences of this institutional deterioration. She was living life dangerously precisely because this is what she did – investigating and exposing people who should have been investigated by the police.

It was the same police who took away the protection she had in years before (even when she refused it).

And it is ludicrous to speak of a systematic undermining of the independence of the forces of law and order, if you don’t accept that ‘systematic’ implies intention, and intention means there’s someone to blame.

And we all know that, in our case, that someone is Joseph Muscat, who oversaw the neutralisation of autonomous institutions, with the obvious consequence that he became chief controller.

So how can he now say he had no political control over the context that enabled Daphne’s assassination in a landscapeof threatened crooks, incom-petent officials and institutional impotence?

So public anger is justified. Indeed, it is the only hope for national healing. The President has cause and effect back-to-front when she appeals for unity so that there can be reform. There can only be unity if, first, there is reform.

‘Unity’ with people who do not even recognise they have any political accountability? Despite the coded-but-clear warnings of the Chief Justice and the extraordinary outspoken declaration by a former Prime Minister?

Such ‘unity’ would attack the foundations of morality itself. It would be the rotten compromise of a nation without solidarity.

ranierfsadni@europe.com