Free speech is sacred and should be so revered. To thwart it is to annihilate your own existence.

That is what exactly occurs where democracy is downtrodden – the people lose their free voice permanently and speak only with an artificial one. They lose themselves and their identities. They become nobodies. They come and go as if they never were.

History can relate to so many who were extinguished brutally from existence just because they dared speak their minds. Malta was not much different at many moments in its chequered history – the people’s minds were controlled, the print media was controlled, broadcasting was controlled, families were controlled... the State and society were in the manipulative stranglehold of The Circles of Circles of the Inner Circles! We are still in the same spheres more or less, because there are interests to protect: party interests, Church interests, business interests, family interests, related interests, self-interests and other interests! It is only those who let go of all these interests, naturally at a retaliatory price, that can truly speak their minds and utter whatever they deem fit to utter!

Our main political parties do not practice democracy: they want to control their inner spheres and the outer spheres – their media is dilettantish in its artificial bias heavily prejudiced to its side. We do not have a serious National Broadcasting Institution and the Broadcasting Authority is reprehensible. The Malta Catholic Church rudely interferes every time its local status is threatened (such as at General Elections, discussions about divorce and abortion, and clerical sexual abuse). The rest of the media applies restrictions on free speech in accordance with its objectives... but discreetly so the nomenclature independent is not publicly tarnished!

In our country democracy is controlled even by various legal references, only abuse has been made of this control also in the name of the law.

Hence this is why it is taking time for liberal democracy to take root, as it will once its real social implications are comprehended. Thus my party is not failing to distinguish anything as suggested by your correspondent on page 13 (TMIS, 13 April).

Everyone should be free to communicate his thoughts, opinions, expressions on any issues, irrespective how absurd, irreverent or irrelevant these might seem or may be.

In our encircled society some can do that... others may not. That is not democracy – that is not respect for free speech.

You cannot accuse an individual on what he says in a democracy – you could accuse in accordance with the law, but the latter lays down specific parameters that have to be proved beyond reasonable doubt in criminal matters.

That does not mean the subjective opinion of any other individual according to one’s whims. It means producing objective evidence on the part of the accuser.

The court is not there to assist the accuser or to defend the accused: it is there to evaluate the objectivity of the accuser’s accusations vis-à-vis the subjectivity of the accuser’s pronunciations.

The objectivity of the average thinker can never be assessed by the subjectivity of the adjudicator’s perception of utterances.

If we mix these notions, we are violating the basic concept of free speech, which is sacred and untouchable in a true democracy.

Dr Bezzina is chairman of the Alpha Liberal Democratic Party