Everyone in Malta is shellshocked right now, so it’s easy to lose focus.

With four people in jail over Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder, three politicians stepping down and Joseph Muscat’s future hanging by a thread, we might ask ourselves: Why exactly should we keep protesting?

But protesting has never been more important than it is today.

Today it is more clear than ever that a deeply criminal web has hijacked power in Malta.

This web is starting to unravel, thanks to the stellar investigative work started by Daphne Caruana Galizia – who paid with her life – and continued by countless journalists and investigators around the world.

But every time a layer is peeled off, four new ones appear.

And that’s because it does not take a handful of people to plan, execute and coverup a murder of this proportion.

It takes an entire web of corruption.

A carefully organised network. A massive network.

A network made up of politicians, business people, magistrates, judges, police officers, secret service agents, lawyers, doctors, accountants, architects and all sorts of other people.

For Malta to move on, this entire web needs to be exposed and torn down.

And a message must be sent to anyone who seeks power again that it will not be tolerated.

Responsibility is not something we will only shoulder when it’s convenient.

Discipline should not be dismissed as needless bureaucracy.

Meritocracy should not just be a slogan to win elections.

And absolute power should never be given away.

At this point, it is not enough for the Prime Minister to resign and be criminally investigated for any role he may have played in the murder, the coverup or the corruption that led up to it and took place afterwards.

It is not enough for Keith Schembri to be excluded completely from government and taken to court to answer for his behaviour.

It isn’t even enough for the Justice Minister, the Police Commissioner and the Attorney General to resign for their involvement in all of this. 

This is no longer about political responsibility or criminal responsibility even.

This is about a major cleansing required at all levels of power.

Our enemy is bigger than we imagine. It is well-funded, well-protected and will go to any lengths to dig its tentacles in even as the Prime Minister’s legacy crumbles.

To fight it, we need everybody of goodwill to join forces and focus on this uphill battle.

This is a delicate point.

We cannot be too pragmatic. There are people out there who are not above suspicion.

There are many who remained silent for too long. They knew what was taking place but decided to look away or were pressured into doing so. Maybe they were threatened or terrorised.

It will be difficult, maybe impossible, for us to trust those people ever again.

But it would also be foolish of us to scare them away from joining our fight and revealing what they know.

Today’s editorial by Saviour Balzan is a case in point. You may hate him for having played a role in Keith Schembri’s web.

But that very proximity is what is valuable to the cleanup today. He knows much more than he has said so far, and the more he reveals, the better we will be armed.

If he was hoodwinked by the criminal web, as he now says he was, he will be feeling more cheated and outraged than the rest of us.

You may think it’s all too little and too late.

But in doing so you might be underestimating the scale of this enemy we must defeat. And the resources we need to get the job done.

That said, there is such a thing as “too late”.

And that might be today.

If all that we know so far is still not enough to anger and get you into the streets calling for this cleanup, you are likely part of the problem.

This is not the time to bicker about Caruana Galizia’s writings, the Opposition’s weaknesses, legal technicalities and such.

This is not the time to worry about your job, your reputation or that contract you’ve been angling for. 

This is the time to show outrage and send a clear message to the country and the world that Malta deserves justice, freedom and serenity.

Saviour Balzan, Evarist Bartolo, Chris Fearne, Miriam Dalli, Randolph Debattista: You are still in time to show your true colours and make your presence felt today.

Any backlash you experience today will be nothing compared to the backlash you will receive if you are not there.

Whoever you are, there is space for you in this authentic movement of outrage. But you can no longer stand aside and wait. You must make it clear that enough is enough.

You must make it clear that your silence will not be bought.

You will no longer be complicit in this evil.

If you refuse to do that today, you are part of the problem. And you can’t blame us for thinking so.

And if you do decide to show up today, know this.

You will be heard.

Your presence will be felt.

It will send shivers down the spines of those who have a lot to hide.

It will result in more key resignations.

It will result in better criminal action.

It will make it harder to enable a coverup.

It will make it easier for us to expose much more than we already know.

It will help our economy get back to stability sooner.

Thanks to the relentless efforts of activists for the past two years, the stage is set and everything is organised.

All you have to do is show up.

If for nothing else, for the Caruana Galizia family who have endured not just the loss of their mother, but also the torture of having to fight this corrupt system for so long.

To the point that her memorial was swept away by government workers every night.

To the point that they were tormented by coordinated trolls who blamed their mother’s murder on them.

To the point that even we – people of good faith – were forced to question their intentions and behaviour.

This is our time to thank them for their heroic efforts at insisting on justice.

And to thank those who lit a candle in the darkness when everyone else was afraid to.

Valletta. 4pm.

Bring all your friends.

Bring your anger.

Bring hope.

When your children ask you where you were today, make sure you can proudly say you were on the right side of this long battle.

It’s simple, really: you’re either with the corrupt, murderous cabal or you’re with us fighting against it.

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