Muscat announces a timetable for relinquishing power in a televised performance on Sunday night, reports Maltese media and Reuters. He will ask his Labor party to begin a process of electing a new leader on January 12 - and sometime after that resign both as prime minister and party leader.

"This is what the country needs at this stage," Muscat says.

Pressure has increased on Muscat in recent weeks, when the investigation into the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia two years ago took new steps and several government officials came to figure it out.

As thousands of people marched through the capital Valletta on Sunday - scandalous slogans against corruption and the "mafia rule" - the murdered journalist's parents and relatives went head-to-head, the public service channel TVM reports. Their message was that Muscat stood in the way of justice in the murder investigation.

Suspicion accuses the government

It was on October 16, 2017, that Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed when a bomb exploded in her car as she sat in it.

Three people arrested shortly thereafter are accused of placing the bomb and detonating it, but the question that remains after two years is who wanted them to murder the journalist.

On Saturday, influential businessman Yorgen Fenech was formally accused of participating in and planning the murder. He is the only one brought to trial for it so far.

In connection with Fenech's arrest last week, Keith Schembri, Prime Minister Muscat's chief of staff and "right-hand man" resigned, as well as Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi. Both have previously been revealed with light-shaded financial links with Fenech.

Got to attend meetings

Yorgen Fenech denies involvement, says the criminal investigation is politically controlled and points out Schembri as the brain behind the journalist's murder. Schembri was arrested shortly after his departure, but was later released and was no longer said to be of interest to the investigation.

Prime Minister Muscat has been criticized for allowing Keith Schembri to attend closed meetings on the murder investigation even after Fenech was arrested, even though it was known then that he and Fenech had links.

Melvin Theuma, a taxi driver who claims to have acted as an intermediary in ordering the murder, has been pardoned by the government in a settlement which means he will testify shortly. He appears, among others, in a picture with Keith Schembri, a picture that protesters highlight on various posters.

The party behind Muscat

Media reports have for several days claimed that Prime Minister Muscat is about to announce his departure, but from his direction it was long silent. His party The Labor Party expressed earlier on Sunday that it had continued confidence in him. When the agitated crowd passed the Valletta party headquarters, the windows were again bombed, writes Times of Malta.

A delegation from the European Parliament is on its way to Malta to review the independence of the judiciary and the data on corruption at the highest level. Malta is part of Europe, notes Dutch EU parliamentarian Sophie in't Veld, who heads the delegation.

"This affects us all," she writes on Twitter according to Reuters.