Minister for the Economy Chris Cardona was among the cabinet members who supported Minister Owen Bonnici on a bill which will revamp the press law, which includes the removal of the possibility of an aggrieved party demanding a court order to freeze a journalist’s assets.

The support was shown even last Tuesday, when the Cabinet approved the final draft of the bill which was later presented to the media, and this after it was only last week that Minister Cardona filed for – and obtained – a court order blocking journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s bank accounts.

Dr Cardona has filed libel suits against the blogger after she reported that he went to a German brothel while on government duty.

In comments to The Malta Independent yesterday, Minister Bonnici said that Minister Cardona expressed his support for the whole bill during Cabinet meetings which discussed the draft. This means that Dr Cardona filed a garnishee order against Daphne Caruana Galizia at a time when he was supporting the government’s stand to eliminate such a provision from Maltese law.

“This bill will bring about a complete reform in the media law. These things take months of work and we have been debating this bill for quite some time during our cabinet meetings. Even up until the last meeting (Tuesday), Chris Cardona was one of the ministers who provided the support for this law to materialise,” Dr Bonnici said.

Minister Bonnici repeated what he said during the press conference on Tuesday when asked about Dr Cardona’s legal action. “Chris Cardona took an extreme measure against an extreme person,” he said. When asked to clarify how the law will distinguish who is extreme or not, Minister Owen Bonnici gave an evasive reply by saying that the reform proposes more freedom for journalists.

Dr Bonnici said that, on the whole, “the person in question (Daphne Caruana Galizia) has managed to raise funds” to cover for the garnishee order, which amounted to more than €46,000. Dr Bonnici was referring to the crowdfunding initiative which raised more than €70,000 for the blogger’s cause.

The blogger has published details of Dr Cardona’s behaviour in Germany as given to her by a source. The PN media further investigated the story by physically going to the brothel in question. Using a hidden camera, a PN media journalist entered the sauna undercover and asked two workers there to identify Dr Cardona by showing them a photo, which they did.

The bill on media law, as explained by Dr Bonnici himself, removes the possibility for a journalist facing libel to be slapped with a precautionary warrant, on both money in bank and property. The changes brought forward in the bill aims to have Malta in line with the principles laid out in the European Court of Human Rights.

If the bill is approved and sees the light of day, garnishee orders on journalists, such as that filed by Chris Cardona against Daphne Caruana Galizia, would no longer be legal.