If you’re rolling your eyes at the title, then this article is for you, most especially. Read it even if you don’t read another word I write. Ever.

How many times have you heard us chanting this slogan at vigils and protests, seen it written it down in articles, seen it as a hashtag on our social media posts and hear it said, maybe even to you, about the many scandals Daphne Caruana Galizia uncovered and wrote about until she was assassinated for our right to know?

“Oh look, so Daphne was right after all,” was my first, visceral, instantaneous reaction when I heard Mr Justice Franco Depasquale read out the damning judgment in the Vitals case instituted by the former leader of the opposition, Adrian Delia.

Of course, most of us do not need a court judgment to convince us that Daphne was right about the theft of our public hospitals but it’s great that a judge has codified this swindle in legal terms and, thus, in a way, ratified that what she had written all those years ago was not the figment of her imagination or “because she hated Labour” or any other deflecting spin the 2019 recipient of the global prize for corruption or organised crime bleats from his washroom in Burmarrad.

No matter how many times he tells us that he’s not afraid of anything while sporting the biggest furrow since Adam started tilling one of the fields in the Garden of Eden, Daphne was right, and she’s got him by the short and the curlies.

It’s been more that 280 weeks since we have been chanting this slogan. And it’s been more than 280 weeks that Daphne has been dead, assassinated. Her pen frozen in time. But is it really? Depasquale’s judgment was momentous. And Daphne should have been here to see it. Still, some are still loathe to give her credit for all the risks and hard work she put into bringing us her stories.

No, its not fanaticism on our part to keep reminding people that behind these stories was a woman who worked alone, knowing full well the risks she was running, having already been at the receiving end of violence, verbal and physical, for decades.

Around the time Daphne was writing about the Vitals scandal, she had written: “The more they chuck at me, the less likely I am to give in. This is a bloody-minded personality trait that has so far foxed and confounded them because I rather suspect it is the first time they have encountered it in somebody they wish to decimate.” She knew they were out to get her and did it anyway. For love of country. How many of us can honestly do that? Not many.

Daphne had warned us about the catastrophe that would befall our country with Joseph Muscat at the helm- Alessandra Dee Crespo

So, yes, we shout “Daphne was right” in the streets and on the digital highways because acknowledging her priceless work is also doing justice by her. Justice is not only celebrated in court. It comes under many forms.

Yes, we ultimately want full justice for her and her stories; that’s what we have been relentlessly fighting for these past five-and-a-half years  but we can also do justice by Daphne by giving her full credit even in the throes of victory. Because, above all, victory is hers. And she paid with her life for it. We owe it to her.

So, yes, Daphne was right. Some still persist in viewing this slogan as a shibboleth, which means, at its worst, “a word or saying used by adherents of a party, sect, or belief and usually regarded by others as empty of real meaning”.

But we’ve seen how true this simple slogan is, not only last week in court but at various junctures since this fight began. The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it but, in the end, there it is, said one great statesman, and no, it’s not you, Evarist Bartolo.

This month, Labour will have been in power for a decade. Daphne had warned us about the catastrophe that would befall our country with Joseph Muscat at the helm.

Daphne was right. In one of her comments replying to someone posting on her blog, Daphne had written that she will outlast all the politicians she writes about. Aha! You who are still rolling your eyes might exclaim: Daphne was wrong! She’s dead!

No, Daphne was right about that too. Even though she’s been gone for more than 280 weeks.

Just ask Muscat.

Alessandra Dee Crespo is vice-president of Repubblika.