The facing page has been one of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s two weekly column slots at The Malta Independent for years on end. Over those years this page has been a source of hilarity and grave concern, of sharp reflections and sharper wit, of uncomfortable home truths and piercing insightfulness.
Last Sunday was her last column. The next day Malta’s top investigative journalist was cruelly and callously snuffed out for good.
Today her page has been intentionally left blank as a tribute to her work. And this page will, in all honesty, be difficult to fill in the future. While this space can easily be made replete with newsprint, the fact of the matter is that no one will ever be able to take Caruana Galizia’s place.
Caruana Galizia was always a challenge and always presented challenges: to her colleagues, to her peers in the media, to the political class and to the public at large.
She challenged us with her news scoops. She challenged us with her insightfulness and theories. She challenged us editors with her newspaper columns, her insistence on pushing the boundaries, with her columns’ sometimes dicey subject matter and with their perennial tardiness.
She challenged her media peers to hold fast to our journalistic principles, to not remain silent in the face of threats. She challenged us to not lose heart even in the face of financially-crippling pre-emptive garnishee orders on libel cases, or the filing of 19 libel cases against her in one fell swoop.
She challenged the media with the quality of her investigative stories, impressive feats considering she was mainly a one-woman show.
She raised the Maltese media’s bar several notches with her investigations. She challenged the holders of public office to live up to the standards of good governance. Few managed. And she challenged the public to demand the good governance they deserve from their elected, and unelected, officials
Heinous, brutal, grisly, horrific…almost every adjective under the sun has been used over the last few days to describe Caruana Galizia’s murder but, in truth, it would be a monumental feat to describe the gaping hole in the country’s fabric that her death has left behind. Such a description would, ironically, be best left to her.
We will not indulge any of the various rumours as to why that bomb had been planted under her car. Pure political malice? Revenge for what she has written or was about to write? One must be careful to not leap to conclusions at this stage but given the nature of her work it appears more than likely that someone was upset by, or was becoming upset by, her probing.
And in her death she has left the media with one final and lasting challenge: to not be cowed, to not lose heart, spirit or gumption by this assault on the freedom of expression and the media – freedoms that Caruana Galizia lived by and which she most likely died by.
The Malta Independent will rise to that challenge. Her legacy will live on and so will her indomitable and inextinguishable spirit.
Daphne, your pen may have been silenced but your voice will live on. You have created an army from those you have inspired on so many levels, and there will be no shortage of people ready to carry the torch once the mourning is over.