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Joseph A Debono and Caroline Muscat (editors)


Invicta: The Life and Work of Daphne Caruana Galizia

Category: Miscellaneous | Published: 2017 | Review Added: 08-04-2018

Rating: 4 - A top read

In the immediate post-war period, in Britain at least, Malta was known as the plucky colony which had withstood against the odds the aerial bombardment inflicted upon it by the Axis powers and been rewarded with the George Cross. This award was even recognised by the newly created British Railways in 1948 with the addition of the initials GC on the nameplate of the locomotive named after the island. Moreover, the presence on the island between 1949 and 1951 of the then Princess Elizabeth with her naval officer husband can only have added to the country's prestige. Little, if anything, was known about less pleasant events, for example the shooting by British forces of four demonstrators during nationalist protests on 7 June 1919.

In the subsequent decades things began to change. The quarrels between Britain and the government of the former colony which had become independent in 1964 led to the vilification in parts of the British media of Prime Minister Dom Mintoff, especially when he appeared to be wanting a closer relationship with Libya's Colonel Gaddafi than with the erstwhile colonial power. For a brief period Arabic even became a compulsory school subject, although the many links between that language and Maltese cannot have made learning that language impossibly difficult.

More recently, attention has moved to the issue of corruption, with doubts raised about the governance of the country and about whether it was still possible to speak of the rule of law. These concerns have extended beyond Britain to the European Union which Malta had joined in 2004. They came to the head with the murder by car bomb on 16 October 2017 of the country's most vociferous critic, Daphne Caruana Galizia, who in her blog "Running Commentary" , begun in 2008 after she had worked for a variety of newspapers, had become notorious for excoriating the Labour Party government of Joseph Muscat which had come to power in 2013. In her last weeks she extended her criticisms to the opposition Nationalist Party, with which she had previously been identified. Her last blog post contained the statement: "There are crooks everywhere you look now."

The volume under discussion here can be seen, given its publication so soon after the assassination, as a first major response to a callous act of violence. It consists of eighteen chapters, seven illustrations, a Preface and an Introduction. Leaving aside the illustrators, the contributors are mainly either journalists or academics. With the exception of the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland and Luke Harding, all are Maltese or have a close connection with the country. Many include personal reminiscences, unsurprisingly given the small size of Malta. Their shared horror about the killing is frequently combined with criticism of the country, described by the retired judge at the European Court of Human Rights Giovanni Bonello in his title as "Mafialand", and with condemnations of certain groups in society. The journalist Andrew Borg Cardona, for example, castigates "(t)he corps of journalists", which "should hang its collective head in shame... because many of its members were more concerned with sucking up to the pillars of state than behaving as true members of the Fourth Estate". (p.51) Equally, there is condemnation of those who responded to the "Running Commentary" by abuse such as "Witch" and "Queen of Bile" (see p.94) or resorted to sexism with the labels "hormonal" and "hysterical" (see p.99), not to mention the attempts to use libel actions to enforce submission . When this led to a freezing of assets by the courts, in a welcome display of solidarity by Maltese society, crowd funding provided the money demanded by them. Even after death there have been expressions of hatred and scorn, with a policeman shortly afterwards expressing pleasure at the assassination and more recently Jason Micallef, the Chairman of the Valletta 2018 Foundation, created for the city's role as European Capital of Culture in that year, making mocking, tasteless and ungrammatical misuse of the final blog post by writing alongside a picture of celebrating St Patrick Day crowds: "The situation is desperate. There is happy people everywhere you look."

Despite all the praise for Caruana Galizia's courage, the volume should not be regarded as a hagiography. Bonello points to political differences. Whereas his family was anti-colonialist, his father being interred in Africa during the Second World War (something that does not fit in with the usual narrative as outlined above), she was something of an apologist of the British Empire and believed in the British model. Not all contributors are happy with the tone sometimes adopted in the posts. It is true that she did not mince words. To take one example, which relates to a subject discussed above, Caruana Galizia reproduced on August 27 2011 an article from Time magazine entitled "Malta: Gaddafi to the Rescue" from 17 January 1972 with the comment: "How Mintoff whored Malta out to Gadaffi". It is reasonable to assume that such terminology was disliked by some people. It should, however, be borne in mind that polemicists, for example Jonathan Swift, have never spared their targets. Moreover, in the final essay of the volume being discussed here, Professor Kenneth Wain of the University of Malta convincingly argues that "the right to freedom of expression is fundamentally the right to offend". (p.170)

Nevertheless, there are certain posts in the "Running Commentary" blog that are problematic, for example a post from 28 September 2017 about the then new leader of the Nationalist Party Adrian Delia entitled: "Well the Kap (head SP) tal-Kattolici u l-Latini certainly has a roving eye". It begins: "A married man of almost 50, with five young children, ogling women almost half his age on Facebook (the photos are attached SP) and enthusiastically clicking 'Like' on their provocative Berlusconi-Ruby-Rubacuori poses and reworked bosoms". One can agree that this is not a sensible thing for politicians to do, especially for one accused (in "Running Commentary") of having had links to a London brothel. However, what follows is somewhat different. After pointing out that people have mistaken other photographs of Delia with a young woman for husband and wife pictures, Caruana Galizia continues: "Mrs Delia is 45 and flat-chested, so it's obviously not her. It looks like he's got the hots for pumped-up (literally) and much younger sexy-white-trash versions of his actual wife. And that really fits in with his view of women and their sole purpose in life." If the criticisms of Delia are justified, it is extremely dubious to drag in his wife and include her age and physique, whilst "white trash" is a very unpleasant and outdated term.

Regardless of possible lapses, what Caruana Galizia must be primarily judged upon is her investigative journalism, her attempts to reveal corrupt practices in Maltese politics and society, particularly since the accession to power of Joseph Muscat . His government has found itself under fire for its system of facilitating the acquisition of Maltese passports by rich foreigners, an agreement with Azerbaijan over oil and gas, which may have led to dubious financial dealings, not to mention the overseas bank accounts of a government minister and the Prime Minister's chief of staff that came to light through the Panama Papers. In his contribution, Luke Harding shows the seminal role of Caruana Galizia in bringing these and other issues to the attention of the Maltese public and beyond. In her contribution, Debbie Caruana Dingli, an artist and cartoonist, points out that her work was honoured in 2016 by the Brussels based weekly Politico, which named her as one of "28 people who are shaping, shaking and stirring Europe". (p.28)

For her work she paid the ultimate price. In his piece Jonathan Freedland points to the increasing risks journalists like Caruana Galizia take in a variety of countries. Most recently, the Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak suffered the same fate, causing a crisis that, unlike Malta, led to the Prime Minister's resignation. Freedland writes about Caruana Galizia (and the same would no doubt apply to Kuciak) that "she reminded us... what journalism is meant to be, even why we became journalists in the first place". (p.86) One journalist who fulfils such criteria and who is important to me, since, as one of the jurors, I was instrumental in his being awarded the Kurt Tucholsky Prize in 2011, is Deniz Yücel of the German daily Die Welt. Fortunately, after a massive campaign, he was released without being charged after more than a year in prison in Turkey, one of the countries Freedland mentions as being particularly hostile to journalists.

For a person like myself, who has lived in Malta for three years and has some awareness of political debate there, the book discussed here is naturally of major interest. The question remains how far this applies further afield. Some knowledge and experience of the country are undoubtedly helpful but limited knowledge should not put others off reading it, not least because the assassination attracted so much attention throughout Europe and the wider world and should remain in public memory. In that it was produced so quickly after the event, it does reflect the personal and often emotional reactions expressed by so many at the time. This is not a criticism but, in the not too distant future, a full biography which puts into a wider context the life of a remarkable person, who even combined her political writing with the editorship of two lifestyle magazines, would be a worthy next step.

Review by Stuart Parkes

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