A vote for Daphne

The Egrant story, allegation or lie, like Dracula or the Vampires dies and rises again, cannot be killed.

ngrima@independent.com.mt

Speaking last Sunday, Joseph Muscat used heavy language in this regard. So would probably any other man facing similar allegations. But then, when the magistrate’s (still hidden from our sight) report was published, it was said the Egrant allegation had been killed off.

So was said when, last year, the general election delivered a

huge majority to Labour. The people’s judgement had shown the Egrant lie for what it was, it was said. The lie was dead.

This week’s European Parliament election is not a general election but is a dress rehearsal for one. It is being treated by the parties almost as an election. What’s missing, at least so far, are the mass meetings. And Daphne. Daphne still alive was a factor in the 2017 election, as she had been in the preceding one. Maybe, just maybe, what she did in the preceding elections played some part in preparing for her assassination.

This time she is dead, but her gruesome end and the issues she stood for are still with us. And while the parties themselves, and the media and the commentators, spend their time and energies on a variety of subjects and themes, the issue of Daphne’s murder and what she stood for seem to have been relegated to a back-burner.

This is quite unlike what happened in other countries where journalists were killed – a Prime Minister resigned and a dissident President was elected in Slovakia. In Northern Ireland, the killing of a journalist seems to have led to those who were responsible for the killing.

But in Malta all we have is three people who are being alleged to have been the material killers. The real culprits remain hidden.

There is much in Daphne’s writings that is indefensible, and much that would not have made it beyond an editor’s scissors, but that is not the issue here. Her killing is indefensible, whatever she may have said. And beyond some grossness, her stand against corruption and for public accountancy puts her on a world level, while here in her country she is still reviled and a government employee daily removes the candles and flowers in the improvised shrine in front of the Law Courts.

The above should be enough reason to encourage voters to rise above party concerns and to vote in favour of what Daphne stood for and against those who in no way represent her.

Going by past elections, this will not command majority support but it has a force of its own: it tells people, the government, that this minority does not buy the spin that discredits what Daphne stood for; that there can be no compromise with the principles of good governance; that much of what commands majority support today is based on self-interest and connivance.

There is much to say about today’s Opposition in this context. On the one hand, its leader has been going round the country and pressing the flesh but, on the other hand, many times when he opens his mouth he