Enough time has passed to take stock of what has been implemented in the last 16 months since the publication of the recommendations on the media by the Public Inquiry into the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

These are the main recommendations:

1.     The setting up of a Police Unit to provide protect journalists at risk.

2.     Police to be more prompt in investigating journalists’ reports on corruption and crime.

3.     More scrutiny of links between big business and politics, public administrators and regulatory authorities.

4.     Co-operation between police and journalists investigating corruption and crime while ensuring that journalists protect their sources.

5.     Police to be trained to appreciate better the work of journalists.

A stronger constitutional and legal framework for journalism

1.     Amend the Constitution to entrench freedom of the media through the duty of the state to support free media and freedom of access to information.

2.     Set up media ombudsman to implement standards of ethics for journalists both to protect journalists and also the public in general.

3.     Reform the Broadcasting Authority, to make it more independent, transform state broadcasting into public broadcasting and regulate impartiality in party media.

Legislative changes

1.     Strengthen the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) to reduce the arbitrary power of authorities to refuse to provide the requested information on the basis of public interest and commercial reasons. FOIA must be improved to provide for more openness and promptness to provide information from official sources.

2.      Protect journalists from Strategic lawsuits against public participation (also known as SLAPPs) in libels aimed at intimidating them. Look at anti-SLAPP laws in US, Canada and Australia and see how these relate to Art 10 (2) of European Convention of Human Rights. Action in this area needs international co-ordination.

3.     To amend libel law, to eliminate frivolous libels.

4.     To drop libels automatically once journalist dies.

Organizational action

1.     Use of public funds to ensure the viability of local media.

2.     To separate availability of public funds for advertising and public messaging from allocation so that all media benefit from such funds.

3.     Take action to regulate the profession of journalists (statute of rights for journalists to protect them from proprietorial interference).

         Set up a panel of experts (academics, media law experts, journalists and media owners) to carry out an in-depth study of the media in Malta so that changes will be implemented in a holistic and comprehensive manner as part of the Constitutional change process led by the President of the Republic.

There is still a lot of work to be done to implement the recommendations of the Public Inquiry. The fifth anniversary of the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia should at least serve as a wake-up call to carry out the necessary work for the sake of good governance and democracy.

Caring for each other, however difficult

In Malta and in the world at large, we need to learn to live together. It is not easy. But the alternative is to tear each other apart. It is only natural to prefer our kind: birds of a feather flock together. But it is not an option any longer to think, feel and behave as if we are still living in a mythical mono-cultural fortress society.

In fact, we have been living in an open and multicultural society. It is an act of civilization to respect each other’s cultures and live together as equals. We need civil society organizations that help to bring people of different cultures together.

This cannot be left up to the state alone. Nor should it be reduced to a law and order issue.

Malta is the ninth most densely populated country of 235 countries/territories in the world: 1,384 persons per square kilometre. We are the tenth smallest country in the world by total area (316 sq km).

We are like a pressure cooker, compressing in our restricted space arrivals from overseas of tourists and foreign workers which are essential for our economy and irregular migrants looking for a better life through the Central Mediterranean route.

We have to deal with all these very challenging and difficult pressures in a way where we combine prosperity, justice, inclusion and caring for each other.

We need organizations that work to bring us together in society.  Such organizations are essential for Malta as our institutions, public services and infrastructure come under increasing pressure to deal with this reality, generating resentment against the “invaders”.

We have become a multicultural society, which itself creates tension and the loss of comfort zones for all as the mind-set and behaviour of residents and those who arrive from overseas have to adapt and adjust to each other and catch up with this complex reality of diversity and become more inclusive. None of us have been prepared for this. We need to learn together.

Bound together by the same rope

The Ukraine war, although restricted to one country militarily, is having and will have regional and global security, political and economic consequences that will be felt long after the war comes to an end. There are around 40 different conflicts going on in the world at the moment, but the Ukraine war is where a major nuclear power is involved directly and which is more dangerous for the whole planet.

The world has become so small that we have become each other’s neighbours. The sculptures called ‘United enemies’ by Thomas Schutte show pairs of men, who hate each other and want to get away from each other but cannot as they are bound to one another with the same rope. Even as enemies we need to find ways of working together, not because we love our enemies and wish them well, but because we need to survive.

Forging cooperative security depends on dialogue and negotiation. The security architecture that we need to build in every region of the world must be built on the principles that however difficult and painful compromises are, neighbours must find ways of living together.

They must not threaten each other. They must respect each other’s sovereignty, right to choose their own political and economic system and seek their own security arrangements without undermining the security of others. The alternative to painful compromise and agreement is much more painful: catastrophe.