People are insisting on justice
Nationalist Party leader Adrian Delia and a number of members of Parliament and Party Officials yesterday morning laid a wreath at the foot of the monument dedicated to the Great Siege, which currently also serves as a makeshift memorial to the assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
But he got perhaps more than he had bargained for when he was confronted by a sister of the late journalist, who gave him a piece of her mind before he laid a wreath at the memorial.
Her sister, Helene Asciak, who urged the politicians to step away from the memorial as she herself was laying a tribute.
“Can you please have respect?”, she said before adding that the wreathlaying was only being done as a stunt for the cameras.
The politicians ignored her attempts to block them and went ahead and placed the wreath anyway, with Asciak telling them “Shame on you, crooks” as they placed the wreath.
Within minutes of the party delegation leaving, the wreath was seen strewn across the ground. Delia had also placed a wreath at the memorial last year.
In the past two years since the assassination, the Nationalist Party said it has taken a number of initiatives in and outside of Parliament to ensure that justice is served and for all those responsible to face the criminal process in Court.
It is the duty of every Maltese citizen to remember this journalist and writer, the party said, with the Opposition also having put forward a motion in Parliament for a public independent investigation into what responsibilities the State must shoulder – a motion that was voted down by Parliament.
“The Nationalist Party believes that everyone has the duty to promote a national consensus on the value of a journalist that was assassinated due to her investigations into cases of corruption, law-breaking, and abuses having looked to protect Maltese citizens.”
Among other things in its statement, the PN pointed out that the government and authorities had yet to establish who ordered the assassination; the Police Commissioner was yet to comment on revelations made by the media; that the government had dragged its feet to start a public inquiry in spite of appeals from various institutions, and that the members of the board must be trustworthy; and that that the Egrant report had not been published in full in spite of unpublished parts being used; criticized the use of tax-payers money to clean up the temporary memorial dedicated to the journalist.
“Whilst Joseph Muscat does not wish justice to be served and the truth to come out, the Nationalist Party will continue to be in the forefront to ensure that the whole truth is revealed and justice is served,” the statement said.
The PN did not comment on an incident that took place before the laying of the wreath, when one of Caruana Galizia’s sisters confronted the PN delegation.