On May 1, 2017, Joseph Muscat, embattled by the revelations about the ownership of Egrant, and in the know that there was another, bigger scandal in the pipeline, hijacked the Labour Party’s first of May event to call a snap election.

We know well enough that the one who squeezed Muscat into this decision was Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Unsurprisingly, the newly-inaugurated Valletta Square, around the Tritons Fountain, was taken up by Muscat’s supporters last week to celebrate Workers’ Day.

He wanted to counter the new revelations coming out of the Daphne Project, including the mega scandal that showed the mafia-style swindle played on the Maltese public in the procurement of fuel by Electrogas. Muscat wanted to drown the calls for good governance and for justice by organising a noisy mass meeting.

Once again, on May 1, Muscat was franticly reacting to something written by the assassinated journalist, or by her legacy.

The truth is that a general election or a show of force by the gigantic Tritons does not help in any way to clean up evidence of corruption, sleaze, money laundering and other criminal activity. No amount of washing powder poured into the Tritons Fountain could transform it into some gigantic washing machine that magically sends any person who is guilty of such criminal behaviour with a whiter than white clean slate back home.

Sorry but it does not quite work like that and investigative journalists will be further emboldened to carry on with their mission to establish the truth.

All over Europe and beyond, May 1 remains the biggest celebration of workers, and of the working class.

For decades the celebration was used to commemorate the martyrdom of several workers in Chicago who, at the end of the 19th century, were shot by police officers while protesting in favour of the introduction of an eight-hour day.

One day the whole truth will come out... sooner or later

Since then, the day has become the stage for protests and demands for improved working conditions, better salaries and equal rights for women workers.

Paris, always at the forefront of modern politics, saw some nasty scenes last May 1, when a group of anarchists split away from an otherwise peaceful demonstration against labour reforms being proposed by President Emmanuel Macron.

At the other European extremity, Turkish protesters were detained by police after attempting to enter Taksim Square, scene of bloody workers’ protests in 1977. This time round they wanted to protest against poor working conditions and the erosion of human rights by the Erdogan regime.

Similar protests were held by workers and socialist groups in Berlin and in Taipei, Taiwan, where workers protested against long hours and poor working conditions.

In Malta, I had the opportunity to attend the business breakfast organised by the Nationalist Party on May 1, which brought together fine speakers from trade unions, employers’ associations and academia, among others.

It was an exercise that focused on the situation of the Maltese worker today, while providing informed foresight about the shape of things to come.

The event turned out to be a chorus of warnings about the state of affairs around workers’ conditions and the real economic situation in Malta. The Maltese economy, we’ve been told, is doing extraordinarily well, and is set to remain so for the foreseeable future. But in the same breath we are told this wealth is not translating into wage increases in the same way that profits are increasing for the investors.

We’ve been reminded of the runaway price hike in the rental markets and about how low-income workers are struggling to cope in this so called ‘best of times’. Not to mention the new levels of stress being caused by our massive traffic problem, noise pollution and the overpowering feeling of living in one big, dusty building site.

Ironically this worker-centred discussion was organised by the Nationalist Party and not by the Labour Party. In Paris, in Berlin, in Istanbul and Taipei, it was the workers’ movements, the trade unions and the socialist parties that mobilised the crowds to protest against the erosion of working conditions or against unpopular labour reforms.

In Malta, while the Nationalist Party focused on the workers’ plight and listened to stakeholders, Labour Party supporters waved their red flags, not to protest against the exorbitant rent prices or the rape of our landscapes, but to laud Muscat and sustain him yet again during this prolonged difficult time.

The truth is that for the second year running, Caruana Galizia and her legacy have haunted Muscat into using the May 1 platform to demand oxygen from his masses.

And twice he managed to get enough oxygen to live another year.

One day the whole truth will come out... sooner or later, I know it will. And when that happens, no amount of oxygen will be enough.

Francis Zammit Dimech is a PN MEP.