It is ironic that Pride month in Malta is celebrated this time of year, and this year at least, it has coincided with one of the most significant chapters of our modern history. The jury for the conviction of those responsible for the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, which as we all know, ended with an acquittal.

What do the two subjects have in common? Quite a bit, actually, and that is because there is no pride without justice.

I have already spoken at length on why Pride matters. Pride gives visibility and courage to young people in this country who need to see that they are not alone. But Pride, at its core, is not the celebration, yet a statement that the state should treat every citizen equally under the law, protect them without exception, and hold itself accountable when it fails to. And it is precisely there, at the level of the state's basic obligations to its citizens, that we should expect more from our Government.

Because equality is not a photo op for politicians; or at least, it shouldn't be merely reduced to that. It is a promise that the justice system will function the same way regardless of who you are, who you know, or how much power you hold. And sadly, the past days have been witness, in the most brutal and public way imaginable, that with regards to Daphne, this was not the case.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered in October 2017, in broad daylight, a few metres from her home, because she had spent years asking the same questions this country's institutions should have been asking themselves. The public inquiry into her death, published in 2021, did not mince its words and clearly declared how the State had to shoulder responsibility for having created an atmosphere of impunity, generated from the highest levels of government.

Five years on from that inquiry, how much of it has actually been implemented? The recommendations on media freedom, on whistleblower protection, on breaking the links between political power and the institutions meant to hold it in check, were left in mostly unimplemented.

SLAPP suits, the legal weapon of choice for the powerful against journalists who ask inconvenient questions, are still available to anyone with the money to use them, years after Europe moved to restrict them. Magisterial inquiries, one of the last real checks an ordinary citizen has against the powerful, have been surreptitiously hollowed out through changes that make them harder to trigger.

The values we celebrate as a community during Pride month mean very little if the institutions meant to protect our rights as a society are compromised. Rights granted by a state that will not hold itself to account are not guaranteed rights at all.  

Pride was never meant to be a government-sponsored street party, on the contrary, it began and remains at its core a protest and statement for what is right. There is no pride in a country that still has not answered for Daphne. Anything else is a cheap photo op.