On Wednesday, former Opposition leader Simon Busuttil was contacted by the police and asked to turn up to the Valletta police station to explain why his car was seen at the  horrifying and macabre scene of… a poster related to Occupy Justice’s call for justice on the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination being put up.

It truly beggars belief. Barely 24 hours after One News posted photos online of Busuttil’s personal car being used for this purpose, the police acted swiftly to right this ‘injustice’.

It goes without saying that the police are acting on the OPM’s instructions.

Since the makeshift memorial for Daphne was set up in Valletta across the law courts, the candles, flowers and photos placed there by people peacefully paying their respects to the slain journalist have been vandalised and stolen nine times.

Despite there being CCTV cameras on sight and despite Nationalist MP Karol Aquilina’s call to the authorities for action, the police took no action.

Since the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Government officials, Members of Parliament and OPM staff have publicly insulted her, hurled abuse and even gone as far to suggest that her husband was involved in her murder. This last claim was outrageously posted by MEP hopeful, former l-Orizzont editor and Prime Minister’s personal advisor Josef Caruana. Despite this very public hate propaganda endorsed, paid for and pushed by Government itself, the police took no action.

Since before Daphne Caruana Galizia herself was silenced forever by those who feared she knew too much, hundreds of revelations on her stories and the veracity of such have become public knowledge.

We learnt how Government colluded with Henley & Partners to silence the local media into submission through deplorable SLAPP lawsuits.

We learnt that that the allegations on Pilatus Bank and the money laundering schemes put in place with the full assistance of Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi were in fact true and factual.

Just this week, following the launch of the Daphne Project, we learnt that deputy leader and Government MP Chris Cardona met with the man commissioned to murder Daphne Caruana Galizia at a bar in Siggiewi after this heinous act and just days before his arrest.

In each of these cases, the police have taken no action. Every time they have been contacted, they state that they cannot talk about any of these cases. Cannot, or not allowed to?

The situation truly is desperate. What we are seeing today is a mirror image of how authorities in Russia control the state, hacking down anyone who dares criticise them and harassing those who may even get close to doing so. We never learnt why Joseph Muscat visited Azerbaijan so many times during the past two or three years, but we sure know that he came back with learning points from the dictatorial regime on suppressing democracy.

That the priorities of this administration are botched and vastly distorted is an open secret. That the police force’s priorities are following suit however, is of grave concern. We cannot continue to allow the state of our democracy, freedom of speech and liberty to protest against explicit wrong doing to degenerate further. Our nation worked so hard to rid itself of this in the past three decades, and that work is being undone in front of our eyes.

The situation right now is one where a member of the Opposition - whose job, lest we forget, is to keep the government in check - is being hauled in to the capital’s police headquarters to explain why he was involved (or at least his car was) in protesting against Government.

This is surreal and wrong on so many levels that it genuinely begs belief. The police, and those who seem to have them on speed dial, have a lot of explaining to do, and fast.

As Pia Zammit aptly put in during the vigil held last Monday commemorating the six month anniversary since one of the worst atrocities experienced in our country:

“Malta is not a normal country”.

It is because we love our country that we cannot continue to allow these events to happen. We were promised Malta would become the best in Europe. If this is our Government’s idea of excelling, we have truly touched rock bottom.

 

David Casa is a Nationalist member of European Parliament