Today I am convinced there is a heaven

There are very few things I am convinced of. One of them is that I harbour plenty of doubts. I hate categorical statements of beliefs. I’m not sure of the existence of an after-life but I think I believe in it.

But this week I have hoped with all my might and heart that when we die we go to a place where we are conscious of all that happens here on earth.

Daphne Caruana Galizia should be alive. But, seeing that she was murdered 25 months ago, I sincerely trust that divine justice allows her, from wherever she is beyond our existence, to look down, smile and feel justified.

Daphne should be alive because what she was doing was for the good of us all. She was on a relentless, lonely, undefended, unsung route, searching for truth. She charged in heedless of the consequences and paid with her life.

People attacked her, intimidated her, dehumanised her, accused her of being a blogger of bile, hatred and lies.

She wanted truth at all costs but the authorities refused to investigate. And today, over two years from her brutal assassination, her voice resounds loud and clear: she was getting too close to those who were wreaking havoc on this country, so they executed her.

She should be living this hour to glare at her accusers, to look into their eyes and say: I KNEW and I was RIGHT.

Daphne was the one who alerted us to 17 Black though she was not allowed to live long enough to tie up the lead to Yorgen Fenech and his connection to 17 Black.

Daphne should be alive, saying to Joseph Muscat and his cronies at Castille: “You were all involved in wrong-doing or facilitating wrong-doing. Directly or through silent complicity, you hid or let evidence be hidden or destroyed, you neutered people who could have or had initiated investigations into illicit dealings and nefarious crimes.”

Daphne was investigating alone. Instead of having the authorities seeking the same truths, the route to find and start eradicating evil, they attacked Daphne. And slowly but surely it is becoming more than obvious that what Daphne said was right and that the worst dealings were happening inside the holy of unholies at Castille.

Isn’t it there that Keith Schembri and Brian Tonna and their band of thieves and hangers-on hold office? Wasn’t

Keith Schembri involved in the same dealings as Yorgen Fenech? Isn’t it obvious that people in Castille knew, know and are still trying hard to defend, the indefensible?

What horror possesses men like Joseph Muscat and his associates in crime to warn the media to tread carefully when reporting this most sensitive of cases so as not to alert certain people who might be suspects?

Did the police really try to set a serious investigation in motion or did they let things flow on unchecked? When the Daphne Project took over the investigations Daphne was conducting, they had shown that Yorgen Fenech was the owner of 17 Black. What action was taken then? What action was taken to keep whatever evidence there was that could in this long time have been shredded?

Why was a blanket defence of people closely linked to Yorgen Fenech made by the Prime Minister? Why did he never stand aside and say let the proper institutions check his own connections – yes the Prime Minister’s – to these people?

Who knows whether divine justice will allow everyone involved in all the last few years of crime to be apprehended and put behind bars?

Who knows if there is enough of an afterlife to make all this sound like celestial music to a murdered, brutalised, long-vilified woman in Bidnija?

Regardless of that, we now need, more than ever, to defend and protect people who, like Daphne in life and after her assassination, have been vilified as liars for attacking Joseph Muscat and his band.

Without the pressure piled on by people like Simon Busuttil, Jason Azzopardi, Manuel

Delia, Caroline Muscat, David Casa, Roberta Metsola, Karol Aquilina, Andrew Borg Cardona, Occupy Justice, some at Independent and at The Times, Repubblika, the family of Daphne Caruana Galizia and a number of others, nothing positive would have happened.

They took up her fight for truth and justice, moved organisations and people beyond our shore to act and push the local authorities to take action.

We need to make sure these people are not allowed to be sacrificed like Daphne. Or their actions seen as treachery against the state. And that they are not constantly vilified by people who are part of government.

Truth and justice will one day prevail. It is a long road but all of us must pay tribute to the woman who fought, and was assassinated, for her beliefs.

Smile on Daphne, smile on in eternity.