Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/888285
maltatoday WEDNESDAY 18 OCTOBER 2017 News 6 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5 cor- rupt ministers like Lorry Sant. "We took state oppression and violence for granted in much the same way that the Chi- nese do, that Libyans did at the time. We had absolutely no idea what it meant to live in a west- ern democracy because we had not grown up in one and were young enough to have scant memory of pre-1971 years," she once wrote. Like this newspaper's founder, she was at the environmental protest in Valletta organised by Zghazagh Ghall-Ambjent when demonstrators standing up against environmental deg- radation were attacked by par- tisan thugs. "There were peo- ple there who really needed to see a doctor, but none of them wanted to go to the polyclinic because in those days, you could trust nobody to do with the government if they thought it might be used as evidence against the government." One of the men who led that attack was Lorry Sant's hench- man Piju Camilleri. "We were demonstrating against outra- geous building development which he, among others, was carrying out with the sanction and cooperation (if not actual involvement) of Works Minis- ter Lorry Sant." Lorry Sant and Piju Camill- eri of course were not small bit-players in the Labour ad- ministration of the 1980s. The enduring legacy was stained by the disappearance of Lino Cauchi on the eve of the 1981 election, an accountant privy to their land deals whose remains were found three years later. His briefcase, thought to carry incriminating documents, was found empty. This was the Labour against which Daphne Caruana Gali- zia often inveighed. Not just the incompetence of the Alfred Sant administration when it floundered two years into pow- er after freezing EU member- ship. Even with Joseph Muscat's leadership, she spoke of the remnants of the 1980s appear- ing by his side – Karmenu Vel- la, and Alex Sceberras Trigona, both former ministers, or An- glu Farrugia, a former police inspector at that time – and reeled back in horror. History tarnished Labour and voters kept the party out of power for over two decades. But when inertia struck the Na- tionalist administration, Daph- ne Caruana Galizia was also ready to take down critics and activists who were out of favour with that administration. In one blogpost she describes what could only be her dislike at seeing the environmental activist Astrid Vella – humor- ously dubbed "the tinpot Boa- dicea of Building Controls" – in conversation with Alex Sceberras Trigona and his wife at a Bastille Day party at the French ambassador's residence: "I thought to myself: oh blessed irony. What a country. Or more to the point, what people." This was a running narrative in her blogs: the partisan divide be- tween the heirs of Mintoffian workerism, and the visionaries that propelled Nationalist de- mocracy and EU membership forward. That red line seemed to pervade her view of politics. IN 2008, Running Commen- tary came onto the Maltese blogosphere. It was the first of elections where the Internet was meekly turning up as a new opinion-maker, with can- didates sporting Facebook and Hi5 profile accounts. It was Lawrence Gonzi's election to lose. Alfred Sant's ace was a land-use scandal targeting Na- tionalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando with alleged trading in influence, to have his Mis- tra fields cleared for planning approval and turned into an open-air disco for his lessee. The scandal was almost lethal, allowing Gonzi to win re-elec- tion with just 1,500 votes and a one-seat majority. In her first outing online, she took Sant to task, the far- rightist Norman Lowell, and even the Greens for talking about coalition governments. "Like the members of a cult, AD are working at persuading the gullible, through the use of jargon and emotive ideals, that (1) a coalition government is possible, and (2) it is desirable, rather than the kind of neces- sary evil that countries without strong parties must cope with." When AD called for Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando's resigna- tion, she brushed it off with ease. "The man doesn't have a ministerial position. He is not even a parliamentary secretary or the chairman of a board. He is an MP, and the only people to whom he is answerable in that parliamentary seat are the ones who put him there, i.e. those who voted for him." When after victory, the PN gave Pullicino Orlando the cold shoulder, so did she. She had been his champion in the run-up to election. But when the PN decided somebody was a liability, Daphne would give that discomfort a voice. It was with the same brush that political critics were painted, environmentalists, third-par- ty pretenders, and journalists. Her friendship with the inf lu- ential Richard Cachia Carua- na, cemented the impression of her role as the party's unof- ficial media. Then, 'Plategate' happened in 2010. At a dinner party at the house of Consuelo Scerri Her- rera, sister of the Labour MP José Herrera, the magistrate had offered up a salacious bit of gossip. The press had got wind of a police report filed by Caruana Galizia's husband over a domestic incident that would have involved a volley of plates. Scerri Herrera's guests included the PBS presenter Lou Bondì and partner Rachel At- tard, who later transmitted the details to Caruana Galizia. She responded mercilessly. She took to task Scerri Her- rera and her companion Robert Musumeci, a PN mayor; she took to task this newspaper's owners (the story was actually broken by the GWU newspaper l-orizzont), for having pried in- to her family affairs. Plategate unleashed a merciless volley of blogs that were illustrated with the photos of the magis- trate's birthday party posted on Facebook by her daughter: too much fun, too many influen- tial people, and too many PN types who were not toeing that important red line of partisan divide. Scerri Herrera responded with libel suits which she later retracted. Caruana Galizia un- earthed juicy exposés of her former friend's personal life, and that information would ul- timately result in a reprimand – many years later – from the judiciary's watchdog. It was a messy skirmish that turned journalists and the powerful into objects of mock- ery. Running Commentary was no longer a showcase of Daph- ne Caruana Galizia's columns. It was a new title for the coun- try's embarrassing secrets. And Daphne took no hostages. Years in the industry as a print news- paper columnist, a publicist for business groups, or as an entre- preneurial magazine publisher, did not blunt her sharp focus when it came to adversaries or those in power she selected to bring to account. Her critics despised her ir- reverence and selectivity, but it was par for the course when talking about Daphne Caruana Galizia. When Dom Mintoff died in 2012, true to herself she refused to fall in step with a prevailing mindset to pay trib- ute to such a divisive figure. "It's perfectly possible to be Christian towards the foul dead without upsetting the living victims or insulting the memory of those who died be- fore their oppressor did… "Perhaps the most upsetting words were spoken by Eddie Fenech Adami, who came into being and into his own as leader of the Opposition precisely as a visceral response, in terms of the power of good, to what was the power of evil in the shape of Mintoff 's government… "A bad man has died. There is nothing good to be said. You're giving him a state funeral be- cause he gave one to George Borg Olivier in 1980. Leave it at that, and cut the cant." But then Caruana Galizia was also pushing boundaries which her critics could not under- stand. Her invective was ultimately the logical extreme of every- one's right for freedom of ex- pression. Talking ill of Dom Mintoff even after his death was an example of the culmi- nation of that cherished free- dom granted by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In that way she was a 'Charlie Hebdo'. But then there were those Daphne Caruana Galizia leaving the law courts with her lawyer Edward Zammit Maempel