The interest of international agencies was crucial in forcing the government to launch the Inquiry. In this case, the direct intervention of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe combined with significant public protest that forced Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to resort to any means of political survival he felt was available to him, brought to an end two years of obdurate recalcitrance by the government.
This Inquiry has, after its inception, sustained continued pressure from the government with a view to limiting the extent of its competence more narrowly than its terms of reference and to pressure it to fold itself earlier than the time it needed to fulfil its obligation.
The experience of this Board is direct evidence, on top of everything else, of just how unwilling the government has been to permit the State to react appropriately to the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia, to uncover all the truth and to present it openly such that appropriate consequent action is taken.