Many people turned up for the manifestation in Valletta yesterday but some opted not to go and they had a reason. There were politicians there. Organised by the Civil Society Network, it was a national protest for justice after journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was brutally murdered a week ago today.
The organisers feared the protest turning partisan and yesterday morning they issued an “important notice” clarifying that, although political parties announced their attendance, it “is in no way a partisan event”.
They banned political party, partisan and anti-partisan flags or banners and said political leaders and MPs should not march in front.
Still, to think the event could be non-partisan is naïve. It was a political murder, in its many facets. Ms Caruana Galizia was a vociferous and outspoken political animal. Everything in this country has to do with politics.
To protest against murder is easy. It gets trickier when one looks at the murder as an assault on freedom of speech, as that is where the crowd would get thinner. It gets thinner still when one stands up for what she stood for, even more what she was against.
It is what she spoke against that the country should stand up. It should be protesting against the state of lawlessness the country has been reduced to.
Malta is being branded overseas as a Mafia state, where criminals abound, where it is a safe haven, be it for money laundering, human trafficking, or selling oil from Libya.
Ms Caruana Galizia spoke up against the degeneration of the country, brought about by the wealth being drawn in from so many dodgy areas. She was critical of the way that some people spent their new-found wealth, their lifestyles, the company they kept. They called those ‘personal attacks’ but she was, in fact, pointing at the falling moral standards of this country.
When she exposed people in the highest echelons of government with secret companies in Panama, she showed how deep the country had degenerated. That those people are still there, only proves how right she was.
Yes, politicians are to blame for Ms Caruana Galizia’s death but they are also the ones who will have to bring the country out of the crisis it is in.
It is about standing up for one’s rights individually, of not being afraid to speak up and of not cowering to politicians.
The solution is political and Ms Caruana Galizia’s murder must be seen in this context. Someone feels powerful enough to put her out. It may not have been for a political reason but it is the political climate that made it possible.
The organisers of the protest yesterday wanted to keep politicians out but ignoring the context of the murder would be naïve at best.
Ms Caruana Galizia could not put up with hypocrisy, let alone corruption, and the degenerate standards of some people with money or in power.
Her criticism was often branded an interference in the private lives of people. Yet, what she was talking about was the collapse in the country’s morals, in the sense of decency.
Not all politicians are like that although, collectively, they are to blame because they wield the power.
So politicians should have been at the protest: to get the country out of the dangerous rut it is in.