A compliant officer with a local accounting agency was participating in a conference on money laundering. Some participants found out he is Maltese. They retorted: “Aren’t you ashamed to be in a conference on money laundering?”
A Maltese businessman rented a service in a European Union member state. He instructed his bank in Malta to transfer money to the company from which he rented. “We do not accept money from Malta”, was the terse response. He had to find other ways to effect the payment.
A Maltese missionary in Brazil went to the dentist and when he said that he was Maltese, the dentist quipped: “That’s where they sell passports isn’t it?”
A foreigner who had just arrived in Malta after visiting Cuba told my friend: “I was in a taxi in Havana on the way to the airport. The taxi driver asked me where I was travelling to. I replied that I was going to Malta. To that the driver quickly retorted: Malta? That’s the country were they kill journalists.”
The assassination of Malta’s soul
I remembered all these incidents while reading what some are mistakenly calling the book about Daphne. Murder on the Malta Express by Carlo Bonini, John Sweeney and Manuel Delia is not about Daphne Caruana Galizia but about Malta. Daphne’s commentaries were not about her but about the dirt our country has been dragged into.
The book is sub-titled Who killed Daphne Caruana Galizia? but it could have been easily subtitled: Who killed Malta? The journalistic work of Daphne documented the assassination of Malta at the hands of the greedy and the corrupt. The assassination of the journalist is the most graphic and therefore the most shocking instance of the assassination of Malta’s soul.
The compliant officer and the businessman mentioned in the above anecdotes are also victims of the assassination of the soul of the nation. The third and fourth anecdotes show that the reputation of the country is also a victim.
The stark truth is that all but the corrupt are victims. There is a difference, and an important one, though. While many preferred to close an eye or benefit from the assassination of the soul of Malta, Daphne preferred to document it and denounce it. Hers was therefore considered to be an uncomfortable voice that had to be silenced.
Bonini, Sweeney and Delia are very conscious of the intimate link between the assassination of Daphne and the assassination of Malta. “Truth and justice for Daphne are truth and justice for Malta too”. They write that “For as long as this train hurtles on, Daphne will not be the only victim.”
Unfortunately, this connection is not present strongly enough in the narrative of several of the speakers who every month commemorate her assassination.
I repeat the words of Orlando: If Palermo got rid of the Mafia, why cannot Malta do the same?
The death of Daphne and the death of our country’s values are one. As long as this narrative does not become the main theme of those occasions, the organisers will risk painting themselves into a corner.
A shocking compendium
Murder on the Malta Express does not add much to the well-known narrative. What it does do, however, is something more important. It documents in one volume the journalistic investigations Daphne carried over the years. Though I had read most of these commentaries, I still found the book as riveting as it was incisive. The synthesis of her journalistic work packed in one book is overpowering.
One reads on with a certain sense of disbelief and shame. Could it be that all this happened? The stark answer is: Yes, it did. A second question immediately comes to mind: How did we let it happen? It is then when a sense of shame creeps in. Did I look the other way? Did I make my voice heard?
After going over the material at one go, one could hardly believe that this nation has been through all of this. Daphne exposed in a gallery of shame the corrupt politicians, the corrupt businessmen, the smugglers, the organised criminals, the corrupt policemen, and all the others’ misdeeds. The list goes on and on.
The book, however, does not give the corrupt policemen the prominence that their notoriety deserves. Readers possibly remember the shenanigans enacted so that a murderer would avoid arrest. One forgives the authors this small lacuna. When a deluge of dirt engulfs a country, the authors had to leave something out.
Time makes one forget and blunts details. This book jolts the collective memory of the country. Old stories of scandals that had been forgotten come to life again. Stories which were shocking then became more shocking now as they are all packaged in one place.
Single-handedly, a woman with a laptop armed with a ton of courage and determination managed to reveal what news organisations did not manage to reveal. She uncovered the Malta that existed but many did not know about. Others did not want to believe it existed.
Bonini, Sweeney and Delia use those commentaries by Daphne that they would have loved to have written themselves. They quite rightly leave out the things they would not have written.
The authors write that they have attempted to present a fair account. They did to a large degree. For example, they did not include in the book a story published by Daphne on the day the Nationalist tesserati voted Delia as leader. The reason probably being that one of the co-authors had described it – very kindly I would say – as ‘factually incorrect’. On the other hand, they should have given those under attack more than a few days to answer the questions the authors had sent. The authors repeat the story – I believe an exclusive of the Daphne Project – that a person accused by Daphne of smuggling phoned Minister Cardona immediately after he had phoned the journalist to give his side of the story; the implication being that Cardona has some privileged contact with such ilk. A Sunday newspaper had reported that this was not true. I expected the authors to amplify their version to counteract the denial.
These are small venial sins of omission, if they are.
The battle continues
“And the battle continues,” is the final sentence of the chapter ‘Who killed Daphne Caruana Galizia?’ This book is a battle cry for the present and the future instead of just a simple narrative of what had happened.
This is the mother of all battles for the redemption of Malta’s soul from corruption which, as the authors write in words evoking a very strong speech by Pope Francis, stinks. This is the battle against the cabal of corrupt politicians and the corrupt businessmen who now seem to be omnipotent. It is time we did something about it, the authors write.
The book is a must for all those who do not want to remain armchair critics or whiners but really want to be informed and then do something to fight against this grave situation.
For those who feel hopeless, I repeat the words of Leoluca Orlando on the second anniversary of the assassination of Daphne: If Palermo got rid of the Mafia, why cannot Malta do the same?