The Prime Minister was in a bit of a quandary last week. After having ignored for days the protesters from Occupy Justice camped right outside Castille in Valletta, he decided to call them into his office, on home turf, where he would usually call the shots. He did not pull it off.

The six representatives from Occupy Justice would not play ball. They did not go to the meeting with begging bowls in hand. They did not go to negotiate or compromise. Their position was clear and they laid their cards on the table. It was not what politicians normally do but that is exactly what makes Occupy Justice stand out: they are not politicians.

They told the Prime Minister they had been attacked by people close to him, people paid for from their taxes. It was just a “tiny taste” of what murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia had gone through, they said.

The Occupy Justice activists said they had expected the Police Commissioner and the Attorney General to act but they had been “nowhere to be seen”. Now they just want them to go.

On his part, the Prime Minister said there was no legal or moral basis to remove the Attorney General. Effectively, Occupy Justice were wasting their time. So, they did not stay long.

The government, always out to gain mileage, thought it fit to issue a statement on the meeting to tell us the Prime Minister said “people are not divided on the unequivocal condemnation” of Ms Caruana Galizia’s murder. It was the closest he could come to the much-abused adage: national unity.

Then, incredibly, the government said that, after the media had left the meeting, the Prime Minister invited the activists to discuss “a few points they made” but the activists said they had nothing further to add.

No matter how the government tried to spin it, the Prime Minister was effectively snubbed. Occupy Justice had not gone to Castille for a photo shoot; they went in t-shirts carrying a message. They did not go to Castille to be seen rubbing shoulders with the powerful. They did not go to compromise. There had been no compromise on Ms Caruana Galizia’s death.

“One does not engage in discussion with someone who repeatedly and publicly said he would not budge,” the activists said.

At the meeting, the Prime Minister thought it fit to say that no one had a monopoly over what was true and good. That is correct but there is only one truth and only one good and that is not open to discussion. The Prime Minister, on the other hand, appears prepared to discuss all, which goes some way in explaining some of his policies.

The six women who emerged from Castille that day were a new breed of ‘politician’ that came in the wake of Ms Caruana Galizia’s death. They act on their own initiative and follow no political agenda other than what is right. They are few in number but immensely strong because of their belief in what they stand for.

Those protesters are not dazzled by the bright lights of the Prime Minister’s glowing economic statistics, his passport sales, his mega projects or his pseudo-liberal antics.

The death of Ms Caruana Galizia has changed the game. Occupy Justice is a power to reckon with.