Since a year ago, each month people have gone to the capital city to demand justice, not for themselves but for murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. In a way, it would be justice for themselves too because her death was an assault on their own freedom of speech. That is why, no matter how much the government tries to kill the story, it lives on as she has lived on, in people’s souls.
Ms Caruana Galizia is bigger today than she was a year ago, something her killer and the mastermind could never have imagined. The hunt for the mastermind is still on and should not stop. Murder is always unforgiveable, even more of a mother, a wife, a daughter and, above all, a fearless journalist who paid the ultimate price.
The hunter is now the hunted and tainted forever. Governments come and go but the hunt will go on.
The murder did not achieve what the perpetrators ultimately wanted to do. Yes, they did kill her but did not silence her. The murder shocked and scared the country and served to bring out new and unknown activists who do not see eye to eye with the Nationalist Party leadership.
Ms Caruana Galizia lives on because from her blood rose many others – Occupy Justice and Kenniesa to mention a few – who meet each month to promote the values she upheld and call for the mastermind behind her murder to be apprehended. The tactics they apply are unpredictable and admirable.
This country has been here before in 1986 with the murder of Raymond Caruana at a PN club in Gudja. That was possibly the last straw of the Labour government then. Labour never recovered from that murder and crumbled fast after that event. But it was not the same with Ms Caruana Galizia’s death, coming so soon after a stunning electoral victory for Labour. The arraignment of the alleged hitmen helped ease some pain but a whole year later people still await answers.
It is useless for the Labour government, for whom she had no love, to expect all this to go away. It cannot. It is useless for Justice Minister Owen Bonnici to play around the makeshift memorial to Ms Caruana Galizia in Valletta, which has been dismantled numerous times and replaced assiduously by people who will never let go.
Dr Bonnici, and his government, are out of orbit on this murder. And contributing to that Labour delusion is the PN itself, which, while sympathetic to the cause, keeps more than a step back, at its own expense. The people that maintained the makeshift monument to Ms Caruana Galizia do so alone. The PN is alienated.
The people who maintained that monument are not the partisans the Labour Party is inundated with, now it is in power. They are people who give the country hope. What they do, they do it on principle and not for personal gain. People want justice not just because Ms Caruana Galizia deserves it but because the country now needs it.
Now in the second year since Ms Caruana Galizia’s death, the ball is, still, in the government’s court. The tactic applied so far does not work. People will not forget; they want justice and the Labour Party should have learnt this from its recent history.
Violence does not work. It only breeds indignation and repulsion. Ms Caruana Galizia gave her life. Her murder is unforgiveable and unforgettable.
This is a Times of Malta print editorial