I admired Daphne Caruana Galizia because she was a woman of sheer courage, determination and integrity. She was a woman who, with her excellent writing skills, spoke her mind and stood firm in the face of criticism, adversity, insults, threats and much worse. She stood alone in what is, in many ways, still a very patriarchal society.
Daphne took on the political establishment, powerful businessmen and the criminal underworld, exposing unbelievable links. She paid with her life.
Daphne had a difficult and lonely task. Many women with leadership qualities, such as she had, have a doubly difficult time: one because they are women and, secondly, because we are in Malta. This did not deter Daphne.
As Malta’s best investigative journalist, Daphne sought to reveal the truth and the hypocrisy, so prevalent in today’s culture. Journalists all over the world paid tribute to her. She was followed assiduously by thousands both in Malta and internationally. As Vicki Ann Cremona said in a television discussion programme a couple of days ago, many people, unsure about what to believe from politicians on either side, turned to Daphne’s blog to see what she thought. Her brutal murder caused shock waves in Europe and beyond.
What can we, Maltese society, learn from this? Does this end here?
Daphne’s terrible murder brings home the disturbing fact that we are drowning in a sea of corruption and incompetence. Daphne saw this clearly and was not afraid to write relentlessly about it, to take on the powerful and the ruthless and to write about them uncompromisingly.
Do we have the courage to do the same? To stand up and be counted? To state clearly that we are unhappy with the road our country is taking?
The government has been foolishly stubborn in neutralising the country’s institutions by the consistent appointments of incompetents or sadly weak individuals. We no longer trust that we will be protected by an impartial system. I hope that Daphne’s murder will be a wake-up call to Maltese society. Perhaps, just perhaps, she did not die in vain.
To her husband, Peter, her three sons, her parents and her sisters my deepest condolences.