Once again, Maltese institutions, whether the police or the judiciary, have blood on their hands.

Two children lost their mother while a nation looks on with despair. Rather than apologise, Angelo Gafa used a press conference to bizarrely defend the police’s incompetency and failure to enforce the laws they swore to uphold.

This strange episode during the Police Commissioner’s tenure was happening while Roderick Cassar was holed up in his home, where he had been since 9.30 am, shortly after committing the murder.

Gafa was brought in to head the police to fix the mess left behind by his predecessors. In part, Gafa has certainly improved on the previously dismal number of prosecutions but the basics still leave a lot to be desired.

He insisted that the police has done work to beef up its domestic violence section, which seems rather puzzling considering Bernice had filed five police reports against her husband, the most recent being the day before her murder.

Rita Ellul was only murdered a few months ago, another domestic violence victim who had reported her abuser to the police but still ended up dead.

A court-imposed protection order had even been placed to keep Roderick away from Bernice, but the suspected murderer was still able to follow his now-murdered wife to her place of work, executing her in brutal fashion.

Of course, Gafa’s wife, Sylvana Gafa, heads the Victim Support Unit – which should have been responsible for ensuring Bernice’s safety. Instead, she was beaten and shot in broad daylight.

“An internal inquiry” has been opened – but we’ve heard this line before. No action will be taken and the inquiry will be carefully hidden from ever reaching public eyes. Once again, Malta’s institutions will wait for the public to turn its attention to another tragedy, allowing the same issues to fester.

Admittedly, inaction against domestic abusers is nothing new in Malta. Figures from 2020 show that over 96% of domestic violence court cases in Malta fail to result in a conviction, with the vast majority of proceedings “exhausted”.

However, the shambolic press conference by Gafa is a kind reminder that Malta’s Police Force is reluctant to even recognise its own faults, spelling doom for its attempts to reform itself.

Gafa remains far more interested to protect the very institution that failed Bernice, failing the nation, and in particular its victims, in spectacular fashion.

What sort of message do today’s tragedy and the police’s embarrassing response send to current victims of domestic violence? The answer is clear to see.

And while it can be seen as a positive, calling the murder of a woman a “femicide” following longstanding campaigns is a pyrrhic victory in addressing the issue.

The laws have long been in place in Malta, even before the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia forced the government’s hand into reforming institutions. It’s the enforcement that has long been a joke.

Many of us personally know police officers — family members, friends, and district officers. We know to be ethical people; imagining them as responsible for a failing system might be hard for some.

However, if we continue to point the finger at “bad apples”, we’ll fail to realise that the whole tree is rotting.

Like an organ in a human body, the police are part of a structural whole and they are certainly not the only ones to blame.

The court system is bogged down by delays – allowing criminals to commit heinous acts.

Bernice would have had to wait till November 2023 to see the case against her abusive partner start.

And while politicians have carefully convinced that criticism of the courts is tantamount to treason, the truth is where justice goes to die.

Our politicians should also shoulder responsibility, as much as it is alien for them to do so. Every institutional failing should be a marker of their own abilities – their thoughts, prayers, and promises for change count for nought.

Unfortunately, Bernice will not be the last victim of Maltese institutions’ ineptitude in effectively enforcing the law. And we must not allow ourselves to forget today’s events, as we’ve done countless times before.

We must finally start demanding long-term actual change and not the superficial improvements that have become customary during Prime Minister Robert Abela’s tenure.

So use all the tools at your disposal – find out who your local MP is and demand that they lead wholesale reform to Malta’s police force, even if it means starting from scratch.

Enough is enough – and we cannot be forced to wait any longer.