Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered because she exposed Malta’s darkest secrets. The institutions that were meant to protect her failed her. She was a thorn in the side of Malta’s political establishment and the underworld. She was a risk; they had to shut her up.
She, ‘the hate blogger’, ‘the witch of Bidnija’, ‘the queen of bile’. They hated her, and incited others to hate her.
A hash tag, #galiziabarra, made the rounds in the run-up to the general election, and after.
A year ago or so, I met Daphne at her house in Bidnija. Her laptop, the laptop that scared the hell out of politicians, from both sides of the political divide, and Malta’s underworld, was on her kitchen table. Her rented car, the one in which they killed her, ripping her to shreds, a few metres away from her house, parked in the drive-in.
The bullmastiff that kept her company while she ripped politicians and criminals to shreds on her laptop sat quietly a few metres away from her feet. It was a peaceful setting, but that woman had the courage, and the determination, to expose shady dealings and criminal links that our institutions don’t have the courage, or perhaps the will, to investigate. Not her.
She was an inspiration to us in the media – but she was far ahead of us all: she had the courage to take on the ‘untouchables’, who, on Monday, executed her. They threatened her. A few years back, they burned the front door of her house. But she was resolute in writing the truth. The lady was not for turning.
So they killed her. Daphne is gone, but their victory is short-lived. What Daphne started shall be continued.
Daphne’s assassination was not an attack on the freedom of expression. That is a freedom long gone
The establishment, which includes politicians, leading businessmen and, of course, the criminal underworld which runs the show, were terrified of being made a subject of her blog. They had reason to be afraid. She spoke the truth. She exposed their darkest secrets. In private, they must have celebrated her demise. In public, they wept her loss – two-faced cowards.
Caruana Galizia was Malta’s foremost investigative journalist. She exposed its darkest political scandals. An early election was called because she went to town with grave allegations of an offshore company belonging to the Prime Minister’s wife.
Daphne’s assassination was not an attack on the freedom of expression. That freedom is long gone. She was met with countless lawsuits meant to financially cripple her. Freedom of expression, my foot. On Monday, the establishment and its acolytes, who, a few minutes before she was blown to pieces, were ripping her to shreds on Facebook, wept.
The Opposition described her murder as “a political assassination”. Indeed, a political assassination it is. Caruana Galizia wrote about politics and investigated politicians and their dealings. She investigated the close links between politicians and the underworld. She had the courage to speak out. She wrote extensively about shady dealings and political cronyism.
A political assassination no doubt, and no government spin can deny that.
I’m not suggesting that the government, or people close to the government, ordered her killing. God forbid that that’s the case. And then, investigations are ongoing. We hope, although we won’t hold our breath – because we have long lost hope that the institutions which are meant to protect the good and punish the evil – that they will do their job and bring her killers to justice. We hope.
Matthew Caruana Galizia, her son, a Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist who many hope will continue what his mother started, spoke for law-abiding citizens when, a few hours after his mother’s murder, he wrote that:
“A culture of impunity has been allowed to flourish by the government in Malta. It is of little comfort for the Prime Minister of this country to say that he will ‘not rest’ until the perpetrators are found when he heads a government that encouraged that same impunity.
“First he filled his office with crooks, then he filled the police with crooks and imbeciles, then he filled the courts with crooks and incompetents. If the institutions were already working, there would be no assassination to investigate – and my brothers and I would still have a mother.”
When you surround yourself with crooks, when institutions – meant to protect citizens’ rights – are set up to fail, when the police force is rotten at its core, then the result is what happened to Caruana Galizia last Monday.
Now we have a choice. Surrender, or stand up to be counted. Let’s hope we’ll choose the latter – but it won’t be easy. Not in today’s Malta. That’s the sad truth.
Frank Psaila is a lawyer by profession and anchors Iswed fuq l-Abjad on NET TV.