We have been through one of the hardest weeks in our nation’s history, culminating in Daphne’s funeral on Friday.

There are some who, even as I write, continue to elaborate on the absolutely insane comments made on social media by those who celebrated the day with jubilation. Why give these people their hour of fame? What they said and expressed falls back on themselves, shaming them – just as Daphne’s ferocious posts when Dom Mintoff died came back to haunt her own funeral. But these comments, hurtful though they are, cannot hurt Daphne now.

So it is useless to dwell on such hate speech. As I write, following a post by Kenneth Zammit Tabona, I am listening to Agnus Dei by Samuel Barber. Now that is far more fitting comment on the Daphne tragedy than so many articles we have read over in recent days, going over and over the same arguments or getting into so much mud-slinging when the whole world is watching. Serious classical music has a far more important role than so many raucous speeches or events.

This must not be taken to mean closure on the whole tragedy – not at all. On the contrary, we must not stop until we get to know the name of the killer and of his father and mother, as European Parliament President Antonio Tajani told us when he visited our offices right after the funeral.

There are also some ominous clouds on the horizon. President Tajani himself referred to a second European Parliament debate on Malta in the coming days and to a motion that will be voted on the following day. There is also talk of the EP inviting Europol to get involved in the investigations. And the Commissioner for Justice has been speaking about cutting EU funds to countries that have problems with the rule of law. As Tajani told me when I asked him on Friday, this may mostly be intended to apply to some eastern member states, but what’s to stop it applying to Malta if things get sticky?

Apart from the investigation into the murder, it is very important to preserve Daphne’s life work for posterity. We learn from Caroline Muscat on Frank Psaila’s programme that a book is being rushed to print with articles commemorating Daphne, including articles by some important foreign editors. That is fine, but ideally, the real commemoration would be to print all her blogs and comments in one massive book. There we will have the real Daphne, warts and all, even though there were some comments and stories she herself deleted after they appeared.

Then that must be supplemented by a running commentary on Running Commentary, filling in the background to each post in the context in which they were written.

Otherwise, I am afraid, we will have her spirit but not really what she stood for. Only historical analysis can provide this and, as said, what really caused her assassination. In time we will, I hope, discover her real greatness – despite her all-too-human faults and blind spots – her relentless battle for the rule of law, and her incredible courage.

She was writing, from the mid-1990s, on what our country was going through: six elections, two referenda, EU accession, scandals in consecutive administrations, changes in mentality, an entire generational change.

As time went by, especially in recent months, she somehow found she was banging her head against a wall – the Maltese people. Her final comment, though not written in any way as her last word, that “The situation is desperate” summed up a person who was so near to giving up. But she did not give up, she was brutally murdered.

The outpouring of grief and the very raw emotions that followed her death right until her burial was something we had not seen, not even after Mintoff’s death. Maltese society is deeply split and there is hatred, real hatred, between the two souls of Malta. Daphne didn’t help, if truth be told, but today we – and Europe as a whole – honour her for her implacable fight on behalf of freedom of speech and for the final triumph of the rule of law.

The debates in the House of Parliament, the speeches that have been made, the many articles written – although valid in a way – have not touched the core of the tragedy. Many have been written in a partisan vein, to score a point. Those by government figures have been especially weak, written in defence and trying to create a spin so as to unbalance the discussion.

This is not what our country needs. We must all find ways to re-compose the national spirit. As things are at present, and as I fear will happen, we seem destined to deepen the split until it becomes too deep to be resolved or re-composed. There seems nobody, but nobody, who can re-compose this small but important nation with its riveting history and its place in the world. Where elitism, xenophobia, small-scale corruption that grows to large-scale corruption, are all juxtaposed together and the honest people for whom Daphne battled in her most inspired posts are trodden down and sidelined.

 

[email protected]