From Mr S. Caruana

Over the year, Daphne Caruana Galizia’a long running war against the Labour Party slowly but surely turned into a personal jihad against Alfred Sant. Last January, journalistic ethics and decency, if there were any left, were cast to the wind and, barely one week after Sant’s major operation, went beyond the limit with a series of articles about his condition in which she repeated the word cancer with morbid relish.

With the election lost and won, Daphne Caruana Galizia has turned her guns on Joseph Muscat and the other contenders in the Labour leadership race, sparing only George Abela. Arrogating the right to express the opinion of moderates, floating voters and pale-blue Nationalists, in last Sunday’s column (20 April), she wrote that Joseph Muscat is disturbing floaters and people like herself. Daphne finds him disturbing in the same way that previous Labour Party leaders disturbed her and, using the papal “we”, she goes on to tell us that “there is something wrong there but we just can’t put our finger on it yet”. How about that for blind prejudice or bigotry? Take your pick.

Unperturbed by the fact that she cannot put her finger on Joseph Muscat’s disturbing qualities, Daphne Caruana Galizia goes on to waste precious column inches in a puerile but futile attempt to ridicule Muscat’s plans for Labour’s future that he had announced the day before.

I read Joseph Muscat’s proposals and did not find them in any way disturbing. On the contrary, I found new invigorating ideas, innovative measures and plans for a solid framework for a modern Labour Party. I had also followed Joseph Muscat’s interviews on Bondiplus and Dissett and heard nothing disturbing there either. It was refreshing to listen to his ideas, including the one for a free discussion on divorce that should lead to legislation with a free vote to Members of Parliament. His historical call for both parties to come clean with their past and apologise for the hardships they inflicted on their opponents between the sixties and the eighties was definitely not disturbing.

This was accepted by many as a brave declaration by a young politician who carries no baggage and who offers a strong ray of hope for Labour’s future.

Looking at Joseph Muscat’s three-year track record as a Member of the European Parliament revealed nothing disturbing. His successful campaigns for the reduction of mobile telephony roaming charges, the removal of the satellite dish receiver licence and for the phasing out of the vehicle registration tax and departure taxes certainly did not disturb anyone, not even Daphne Caruana Galizia, I am sure.

And so Daphne’s jihad goes on relentlessly. She is now on a rampage, rubbishing Joseph Muscat, Michael Falzon, Evarist Bartolo and Marie Louise Coleiro-Preca and rooting only for George Abela.

Anyone wants to bet that if George Abela emerges the winner, Daphne would begin to find him disturbing as well? The question is only when.

Stephen Caruana

San Pawl tat-Targa