“There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.” That is how Daphne Caruana Galizia ended her last blog post. Even the title of that post clearly suggests that Daphne had the courage to freely use the terms the English language provided her with.
Nevertheless, even if I did not know her personally or have read most of her well-written pieces, the phrase I referred to at the beginning is certainly directed at the Maltese political situation in general rather than her own state of mind.
Surely, or, at least, it seems to be the murder of a courageous journalist, something that is light years away from the character of the Maltese people. It is equally obvious – at least to me, an Italian journalist accustomed to even more serious crimes – that this vile deed has little in common with the worst years of Italian terrorism or what happened in previous years in nearby Sicily.
It remains an act carried out by cowards, which Sicily does not export.
I am sure the assassins came from far away and have not merely crossed the Sicily-Malta channel. This is an unprecedented act of cowardice. They have killed an uncomfortable witness, a journalist, but, above all, a woman and a mother.
The Malta police should soon be able to identify whoever commissioned the murder, even if I believe that whoever was responsible is no longer on the island.
Malta is not just a Mediterranean island but a sovereign state of the European Union. Whatever happens in Malta has international repercussions. Malta has too often ‘guaranteed’ immunity to criminally suspect international groups for the sake of investments, which have been mistaken for progress, and is now facing the consequences.
Malta should not and cannot behave like a small offshore state tolerated by world finance to favour illicit dealings, nor should it feel as if it were a protagonist of economic development devoid of an ethos.
The political class should avoid turning its electorate into a population of colluders
Above all, the Maltese political class should avoid turning its electorate into a population of colluders.
This, to my mind, is the key issue: the traditional healthy relations between the island’s clans, villages and families have, in recent years, become the pretexts for a generalised collusion. And it is because of this climate of collusion that Daphne has written that “there are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.”
It is what one breathes in the Maltese air: denying this is in the everyday events of a country that is destroying its 20th century memory, only making an exception, for purely opportunistic tourism purposes, for the Knights’ period.
It is found in the drugs trafficked in Paceville and in the circulation of money gained through easy profits.
“There are crooks everywhere you look in Malta now” is what visitors to the island tell me who care to notice what is happening in the Mediterranean.
One hopes this brutal crime will not be just the start of a subtle intimidation of the Maltese people who, in return for a presumed well-being, will give up, in fear, its own freedom.
One must not give in to blackmail.
Daphne did not seek death to reply to that idiot of a police sergeant who wrote about her on Facebook.
I am also convinced that the Maltese government has absolutely nothing to do with Daphne’s death.
I hope that Daphne’s story moves in step with that of a government which, like Pinocchio, is gradually transformed into a good boy.
Then, the spirit of the journalist that was so brutally silenced after being goaded in the flesh, by making it face its misdeeds, can, one day, rise again to give the Maltese government a sign of a first unmistakable step towards the acceptance of the advice by others expressed in freedom.
The freedom of expression.
Enrico Gurioli is an Italian journalist and author.