Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1080741
24 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 10 FEBRUARY 2019 OPINION Raphael Vassallo Thirteen reasons why Manuel Delia should have his memory tested A word of warning: this article is going to be a point-for- point response to Manuel De- lia's point-for-point response to my article last Wednesday. So, a) it's going to be on the long side, as I feel I have a lot to say right now, and; b) if you haven't read the previous arti- cles, you might get a little lost. You have been warned. Before getting started, how- ever: it turns out that, in all this repartee… Manuel Delia did not make a single, solitary, fleeting reference to the main thrust of my entire argument in that article. He casually omitted to mention that art- ists, authors, journalists and publishers faced the constant threat of criminal prosecution in this country until only five years ago… a threat that was carried out most enthusiasti- cally (and spuriously) at a time when he himself was part of the government promot- ing the very State censorship agenda he seems to have sud- denly discovered only now. Big surprise there, huh? Delia doesn't seem to ever remember his own recent role in the Nationalist adminis- tration that went down in a blaze of corruption in 2013…. corruption, I might add, that took place in the energy department, right under his very nose, in the years when his master – minister Austin Gatt – was also in charge… and which this newspaper eventually uncovered only after encountering a wall of resistance for years. I thought I'd get that out of the way first, because it's a caveat that will be cropping up time and again throughout the rest of this article. Now, onto the business. Delia's first argument (out of 13) is that "libel laws in Malta are used tactically by politicians to silence jour- nalists. There are dozens of examples of this but I'll stick to a few fresh ones…" Whoa, hold your horses there. Why stick only to a 'few fresh ones'? (Let me guess: because those examples suit Delia's political argument, but the others don't, huh?) Why not drag up some older, mouldier cases… some dating back to a time when the gov- ernment abusing those libel laws happened to be occupied by Manuel Delia's own party for almost 25 years? Here, let me refresh his memory a little. In 2004, Lawrence Gonzi instructed his entire Cabinet to sue this newspaper for criminal libel over a satirical editorial which likened him to 'St Joseph the Worker'. As a result, MaltaTo- day found itself facing around 15 libel suits at once. It is worth revisiting that incident, because the Maltese media landscape was consid- erably different in 2004. Mal- taToday was still a new kid on the block; and the older, more established English-language independent newspapers were considerably more accom- modating towards Nationalist administrations than they are today. [Note: I worked for the Malta Independent back then, and I know what I'm talking about]. There was no social media, either. So effectively, Gonzi's kneejerk reaction to being lampooned by one, sin- gle solitary newspaper – the only independent one that was even remotely critical of his government – was to try and shut it down altogether. Here, I shall have to admit to memory deficiencies of my own; but I don't recall Ma- nuel Delia ever howling about 'threats to freedom of expres- sion', when it was his own government gleefully clamp- ing down on the free press. Point number 2: "in any case, our defamation laws, even as reformed, and the bulk of the decisions taken by our courts in libel cases are contrary to European free speech culture and in their majority would be struck down in the European Court of Human Rights…." Sorry, but I call bull on that. There have been questionable libel verdicts here and there, sure – and again, I could men- tion a few that took place long before 2013 – but in the main, Malta's courts have gener- ally been fair and consistent when it comes to deciding libel cases. ECHR landmark rulings (such as Handyside vs UK, for instance) are held up as precedents here, too. The Vella Gera/Camilleri case am- ply attests to this; and so does my own experience of having been sued for criminal libel by the prison director and five prison warders… in 2011 if you please, for an article enti- tled 'Grim reality of Victorian prison conditions' about Cor- radino Correctional Facility, then under the responsibility of Carm Mifsud Bonnici. So, if Delia is so convinced that our laws and case history run counter to 'European free speech culture', the least he could do is provide a list of cases which he thinks would be 'struck down in the Euro- pean court'. My guess is that it would not be a very long list at all. Interestingly, though, the last time the ECHR was indeed called upon to settle an issue related to censorship, it was the case of 'Stitching'. If Delia can't remember the details, I suggest he ask Pia Zammit (who eventually starred in the play when it was finally staged… almost 10 years later). Unless she suffers from the same form of selective am- nesia herself, she should surely remember which of Malta's political forces had worked to ban that play, and keep it banned… and which went on to remove the censorship laws that permitted it to be banned in the first place. "Thirdly, though our laws are bad enough, some coun- tries have worse ones and the government's allies have resorted to libel tourism to silence journalists." OK: this one's a little more insidious because the under- Delia doesn't seem to ever remember his own recent role in the Nationalist administration that went down in a blaze of corruption in 2013… corruption, I might add, that took place in the energy department, right under his very nose, in the years when his master – minister Austin Gatt – was also in charge… and which this newspaper eventually uncovered only after encountering a wall of resistance for years