Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1080741
25 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 10 FEBRUARY 2019 OPINION lying cause for concern here is at least justified. (Though it must have escaped Delia's attention that this newspa- per, and I myself, have been raising it for years). It is true that the wealthy can circum- vent our system by filing libel suits in other jurisdictions. But if Manuel Delia genuinely thinks that Malta, as a state, has any power to dictate how other countries apply their own libel laws… he must be suffering from more than just amnesia. For one thing, there is simply no way the Maltese government – or Maltese law courts, or Maltese anything at all – can possibly prevent entities like Henley and Partners or Pilatus from suing Daphne Caruana Galizia, or anyone else, in London (short of Malta invading and con- quering Britain, anyway); and for another… well, this is all getting a little confusing. A second ago, Delia was com- plaining that our libel laws were primitive by European standards. Now, he's referring to libel suits filed in the UK…. Switzerland…. the USA…. What, those are examples of countries which 'have worse laws' than ours? If so… by De- lia's own argument, the state of Malta's freedom of expres- sion can't be all that bad, now can it? We're better off than three of the most advanced democracies in the world… Four: "the risk of these proceedings in Malta and abroad, silence journalists from speaking their mind before they even consider doing so. It's called the chill- ing effect that is only felt if unlike Raphael Vassallo one places oneself two steps away from the warm glow of the taghnalkoll cult…" This may come as a small surprise to Manuel Delia, but the chilling effect he speaks of was just as chilling in 2007, when Malta's entire aquacul- ture industry turned its heavy weaponry onto little me, and – threat of garnishee orders and all (which were intended at preventing this newspa- per from paying salaries) – once again tried to shut this newspaper down. (And whose 'warm glow' was Delia basking in at the time, I wonder?) I don't feel like digging all that up again; but (unlike Delia) I remember the role the Fisheries Ministry played in all those lawsuits. If Henley and Partners are 'the govern- ment's allies' today… what was the relationship between the Malta Aquaculture Fed- eration and minister George Pullicino? Did it prick Delia's conscience, that the govern- ment he formed part of was actively trying to suppress media scrutiny of an industry that contributed 6% of Malta's GDP? Or was he too busy trying to dodge MaltaToday's questions about discrepancies in Malta's oil-procurement figures to even notice? Reason I asked that last question is that – incred- ibly – Manuel Delia actually had the nerve to write… this: "journalists are given access by Ministers according to how likely they are to chal- lenge them with questions." Doink! I wonder if Delia remembers a certain minister named Austin Gatt… not to mention a certain set of ques- tions regarding why Malta seemed to always be choosing higher prices than necessary to purchase oil… which then led to other questions about why Malta had mysteriously abandoned a plan to convert to natural gas, so that… um… we would continue to buy fuel under the same, dodgy (and ultra-secretive) arrange- ment… It would be interesting to see what, if anything, Delia actually remembers of any of that, seeing as it all hap- pened on his own watch. Does he remember Austin Gatt enthusiastically replying to all the media's challenging questions about Malta's fuel procurement agreements? Or publishing all the relevant contracts? Because as I recall, Gatt actually brushed off those questions by describing the journalist who asked them as an 'idiot'. Makes you wonder if Delia was writing Austin Gatt's public statements at the time, as he would later do for Adrian Delia. Nor is that the only ex- ample of selective amnesia in action. Delia must have equally forgotten the 2006 incident, in Parliament, when his boss Austin Gatt threatened to have a One TV cameraman arrested for the grave crime of filming a public accounts committee meeting… after the commit- tee itself had given permission for the session to be filmed. Interestingly enough, the Institute of Maltese Journal- ists – you know, the one that Delia evidently thinks 'doesn't exist' – had condemned Gatt's execrable behaviour at the time. "No journalist should be threatened or prevented from carrying out his duties, even in Parliament," the IGM said in a statement. "The media has to be able to carry out its duties without fear." Let me repeat that last part: "without fear". It wasn't a reference to journalism in Malta under Labour in 2019. It was a refence to journalism in Malta under the National- ists in 2006. Another small incident De- lia would like us all to forget is when Matt Bonanno lost his job at The Times, after Daphne Caruana Galizia had outed him as the guy who 'incited' (he did not – he was just tipped off about a possible heckling incident) Nicola Abela Garret to call Austin Gatt a 'fucking wanker' on campus in 2011. At the time, a Gatt henchman made his way to Abela Garret to make her apologise by say- ing she could be grateful for her university stipend. Back then, it didn't seem to bother Manuel Delia very much, that an independent newspaper could be apparently encour- aged to sack a journalist on purely political grounds – the ones that Caruana Galizia seemed to determine through her blogs against working journalists. And even if Gatt (or, for that matter, Delia himself) didn't force the sacking over the obvious embarrassment… the pressure can be seen to have still been there. In 2011, we were living in an age when journalists knew they couldn't write certain things for fear of losing their job, or getting arrested (chilling, is it not?). Another example: this news- paper being sued for criminal libel – yes, with the threat of imprisonment for its editor – by the head of news directly appointed by Lawrence Gonzi at the time, Natalino Fenech – for printing a right of reply in the newspaper one week later than press law require- ments. Where was Manuel Delia in 2011? What was his job? And what did he ever say about 'freedom of expression', throughout the years when he himself was part of the government enthusiastically defecating all over it? Right: I could almost stop there, because the rest fol- lows the same pattern to a 'T'. You could literally pick any of Delia's 13 points, at random, and find they all apply with spectacular preci- sion to the state of freedom of expression in Malta for the full 25 years of National- ist administrations (includ- ing all the time he was part of that administration, and therefore has to shoulder his own share of the collective responsibility). What's more, you will also realise that the situation wors- ened considerably between 2004 and 2013. We had a gov- ernment that openly pooh- poohed and ridiculed journal- ists who asked important and challenging questions (about what turned out to be a major corruption scandal); which liberally abused Malta's libel laws to silence and intimidate sections of the media; which polluted the media landscape through party-owned TV stations (for yes, Delia even brought that up himself… forgetting, as usual, that his own former party has owned and run one of those stations for 20 years)… and ultimately, this was the entire point of my article last Wednesday. You can't just ignore all that in a discussion about 'freedom of expression' in Malta; and even less can you convenient- ly overlook the fact that the situation has – whether you accept it or not – improved quite a lot since 2013 (not, of course, unless you have a vested political interest in do- ing so… like, um, getting back into power, so everything just reverts back to the good old days). But there are some of Delia's points that are just too 'pointed' to ignore. This one, for instance, is my fa- vourite: "independent jour- nalists who step on the toes of the political parties face an onslaught of organised keyboard warriors coordi- nated and resourced by the parties themselves…" Huh? What? Excuse me, please? Does he mean, perchance, the 'organised keyboard warriors' who never miss an opportunity to publicly dismember anybody who expresses any opinion even remotely conflicting with their own? Like, for instance, the ones who took to Face- book en masse to bludgeon anyone who dared express scepticism about the Egrant allegations in 2017? Or the ones commenting on his own blogpost (with, oh, such elegance!) right now? At the end of the day, this is the one thing that consistently fascinates me about people like Manuel Delia. It's not so much that they're inconsist- ent, or laughably transparent, or even downright dishonest in how they distort reality to suit their own political purposes. (To be honest, that no longer surprises me a jot). No, it is more the astonishing, spectacular nakedness of their hypocrisy... and how they just don't ever expect anyone to even notice it at all. There: that's just under 2,300 words, and not a single reference to body parts or effluence. At times, I even astonish myself… Does he remember Austin Gatt enthusiastically replying to all the media's challenging questions about Malta's fuel procurement agreements? As I recall, Gatt actually brushed off those questions by describing the journalist who asked them as an 'idiot'