The first republic has failed us. No constitution is perfect and we certainly learnt that in the 1970s and 1980s when the power of the executive branch, supported by informal paramilitary vigilantes, was abused to the point of madness.

But the grotesque excesses of the Labour administration then, for which Joseph Muscat had to express regret reluctantly in order to rise to power, pale in comparison with the complete takeover of the State by a small gang of power-mad and money-mad tyrants.

One by one we saw our institutions occupied, zombified or nullified by Joseph Muscat.

It started with the civil service, within days of coming to office. They decapitated the civil service removing all but two ‘permanent’ secretaries – what an ironic title – whether they leant towards Labour or PN and replaced them with their stooges. They then mobilised an army of commissars in every single department of government to ensure that party control implemented a policy of vicious discrimination, cooperation with the underworld, institutionalised corruption and greedy environmental devastation.

Then they drove their fists down the throats of regulators and ripped out their insides. They made the planning authority a vehicle for irrational over-development. They made the financial services regulator a reception area for Iranian handlers of Azeri blood money. They made the lands department a cash box for cronies. They made the data protection commissioner, the government’s guardian against public scrutiny.

With weak, corrupt and incompetent heads on regulatory bodies they removed our last line of defence against mafia godfathers and dictators, making Malta the principal laundromat of blood-money in Europe.

Then they proceeded to dismantle the administration of justice. They castrated prosecutors and they fired a long series of police chiefs until they found one who would let them direct the police force from Castille. They replenished the bench with retired Labour politicians.

Then they tightened the screws on the free press. They hid public contracts or published them redacted to the point of absurdity. They demonised critics to the point where brutal assassination became explicable and understandable, and government supporters could not be brought to show an ounce of regret for the loss of human life. And they gave the private bankers they share with the family of the Azeri ruler a free hand to bully the local press in a manner that is illegal in most democracies.

Directly and personally, they embarked on a war of intimidation on the press using the libel system as a vessel of suppression, maturing from Anġlu Farrugia’s dingy 1984 cells to a cleaner, but no less repressive regime of drowning journalists in a sea of law suits, garnishee orders, legal fees and court time, driving them into penury or silence.

In this context they could proceed with their great roadmap, instituting a tangentopoli with margins on the building and repair of schools, the hospitalisation of the sick and wounded from Libya, the trafficking of contraband fuel in our seas, the procurement of a gas tanker, the procurement of fuel from Azerbaijan, the sale of our energy provider to the Chinese… The list goes on and on.

The fact that they could do all this with impunity highlights the problem with our Constitution. And any attempt at arguing that the democratic ballot gives the government licence to conduct itself in this manner is mistaken, if not downright disingenuous. Yes this country is governed by democracy. But this country is also a republic and a republic has rules that far outweigh the power given to a government by the legitimacy of a public vote.

The democratic argument is also being used by supporters of Adrian Delia who refuse to accept that his position as Leader of the Opposition is now untenable. Like Muscat, Delia may have nothing to do with the actual criminal act of the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. But like him – albeit to a much, much, much lesser extent – he bears political responsibility for extending Labour’s dehumanisation of the critical press where this served his political ends.

The real point is that the world is watching the collapse of this democracy. It is damaging and humiliating enough that we have to go through this mess, with the world press publishing stories of ‘murder in paradise’. We need to admit we have a problem here. We cannot keep telling ourselves that the majority of the country elected Muscat and the majority of party members elected Delia, so nothing should be done about the present crisis because that would be undemocratic; this is nothing short of collective suicide.

We must show the world that we realise we have a problem and we are going to do something about it

We must show the world that we realise we have a problem and we are going to do something about it. Muscat and Delia should both resign. A cross-party coalition led, of course, by the Labour Party should form a government with a short mandate and a short list of tasks.

Firstly, we need to write a new Constitution with genuine and effective separation of powers. Executives that are elected democratically must certainly enjoy effective governability. But governance needs to go beyond, with a balance that includes a well-equipped full-time Parliament that is separate from the executive, a fully independent attorney general under judicial rather than executive scrutiny, and anti-trust laws that separate the media from political parties.

Secondly, we need to give a signal to the world that we are dealing with the devils in our midst. This is not business as usual.

We must freeze the passport sales programme and start a judicial review of every single passport granted. Where new passport holders come from democracies we inform their country of origin, and if they request it on law enforcement grounds, we cancel the Maltese passport. Where new passport holders do not come from democracies we inform the other European capitals of the identity of these new ‘Maltese’ people.

We replace the board at the Malta Financial Services Authority and invite European regulators to identify international experts we can empower to review and clean up our licence holders. We shut down Pilatus Bank and send them and the Azeri laundromat to look for alternative slimy pastures.

We remove the Police Commissioner and work with our Italian neighbours to set up an anti-mafia centre of expertise within our police department. With our neighbours’ help, we introduce legislation that allows us to use anti-mafia courts and prisons in Italy where they know just how to handle this filth.

Thirdly, the political class must defer to our civil society in a national effort to re-examine our conscience as a community, to understand dispassionately and deeply why it has come to this.

We must rebuild this country’s reputation. Even the childish, and manifestly mistaken accusations that our reputation has been hurt by the actions of Daphne Caruana Galizia or her mourners or the PN, are in and of themselves an admission that our reputation is indeed very seriously harmed.

The Ernst and Young report published earlier this week shows the damage started long before Caruana Galizia was assassinated so brutally. Things are bound to get worse.

A time for national unity is not a time to silently support the status quo. It is time for the causes of separation to step aside and for the rest of us to re-energise the drive to transform our country. A new Malta is needed and it is up to us to build it.