‘We must redeem ourselves’: Former Speaker uses Victory Day speech to pay tribute to Daphne Caruana Galizia
Former Speaker Myriam Spiteri Debono paid a tribute to assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in her Victory Day speech at a wreath-laying ceremony in Valletta, and called on the nation to stop being distracted by “gossip”, “name-calling”, and “quips and counter-quips” which serve for nothing other than to achieve “hollow and immaterial” partisan victories.
In her speech, given at the Great Siege monument – which has served as an unofficial memorial to Caruana Galizia since her assassination in 2017, called on the country to redeem itself and unite to implement the changes which have to be made.
Spiteri Debono, a veteran of the Labour Party, was Malta’s first (and so far, only) female Speaker of the House, having held the role during Alfred Sant’s Labour government in 1996.
The speech was not sent out to newsrooms by the Department of Information, although it was included in the commemorative programme handed out at the ceremony.
“Raymond Caruana and Karin
Grech were the victims of the prevailing situations in the times when their blood was spilled and their lives cut short. The killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia was different – it was a brutal and ghoulish murder. Investigations have so far shown that she was the intended victim of the killing. They killed her to shut her up”, Spiteri Debono said in her speech.
“This was an execution, intimately connected with the investigations she conducted in the exercise of her profession as a journalist. It would help everyone to strengthen the respect and the appreciation we should have for all those who work in investigative journalism and who spread the news. Let us remember that journalism is the fourth pillar of democracy.”
“Daphne’s death switched on for all of us several red warning lights. Her death shook us to the core. It is very difficult, I would say impossible, to dull in any way the pain inflicted on her family, and the sadness those she loved and those who loved her feel.”
“We must redeem ourselves anew. We must unite, as we have done in our past, to implement now the necessary changes we have started to make,” she continued.
“We cannot be distracted by gossip and name-calling, by quips and counter-quips scoring political points, and securing nothing more than hollow and immaterial partisan victories that often only manage to sow divisions among the people,” the speech goes on.
“There is no one great victory. There are many small victories that together make for a great win. The fight for what is right, above all the fight for fair and proper governance, is continuous and challenges us every day. We can never relax our collective vigilance. We must stand together.
“We have the backbone we need to fix what has been identified as broken, and to fix also what from time to time we realise needs to be changed or to evolve.
“With gratitude and praise for all those who in distant times right up to our days showed us the right way, particularly in matters of governance, let us build the country we deserve, so that future generations find the strong foundations they need to continue to progress.”