Anġlu Farrugia, that congenital idiot who used to be worth less than his moustache until even that walked away from him, came up with the most self-defeating explanation for refusing to name a room in the parliament building after Daphne Caruana Galizia, since he told his mother he shat in the soup bowl because he wasn’t hungry.
I don’t know where to begin with that. But as readers familiar with this blog will know, that hardly every prevents me from trying.
Firstly, since when is parliament meant to be impartial? Of all institutions of the state, it’s the one that is most expected to take a stand on things. It exists precisely to give voice to the grievances of the people. It exists to allow the forces of opinion to be given vents through which to flow, avoiding the need of rebellion and violence. No wonder we have to protest in the street if the Speaker of our parliament thinks it’s not the job of parliament to hear us and speak for us.
Secondly, even if impartiality was something to be wished for from the people’s representatives (a concept which I must insist is utterly perverse), exactly which part is Anġlu Farrugia hesitating to take?
On one side there’s Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed by car bomb. On the other side her killers. Is Anġlu Farrugia confused about the choice?
It doesn’t surprise me. Here’s a note for the judges conducting the inquiry into whether the state was in a way responsible for the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Anġlu Farrugia’s impartiality between killers and victim is a strong hint, would you not say?
If the state has the duty to step in and protect people’s lives, safeguard free speech, and guarantee everyone’s right to be informed, it cannot be neutral about the killing of a journalist. If it is; if it takes a step back to accord the powerful and the rich armed with the bomb the same opportunity as the journalist armed with her pen, the state is neglecting its primary duty.
To be sure naming a room in parliament for Daphne Caruana Galizia goes nowhere near atoning for the state’s failure in that primary duty. But that our state is not even willing to do that much shows Anġlu Farrugia sleepwalking naked, his look blank, his whispers barely audible as he wonders if all the perfumes of Arabia could sweeten his little hand.
If you stand by as two school boys fight, one armed with a stick, the other unarmed, your neutrality is an effective alliance with the boy with the stick.
In remaining neutral between assassins and their quarry, Anġlu Farrugia takes sides with the assassins. He too, this week, killed Daphne Caruana Galizia. Again. With every insult they conceive, with every shameful act of violence against her, her memory and her surviving family, they kill her again.
And again, she comes back. Daphne is her killers’ unending storm of an anxiety nightmare. Though her death is a great injustice and a terrible, irreplaceable loss, the power of her words grow stronger and the devastation of her enemies ever more inevitable. The naming of a room in parliament does not change that fact. Refusing to do it, does not change anything either.
Neville Gafà, that congenital idiot who’s worth less than his beard, who has been branded a liar and a perjurer in sworn testimony given by Robert Abela in a criminal inquiry, regaled us with his opinion about naming a room in parliament for Daphne Caruana Galizia. He used a vernacular turn of phrase that suggests the idea is as outrageous as naming a room in the parliament building for the Speaker’s favourite cat.
You’d have to wonder whom Neville Gafà would imagine worthy of the honour. Himself? He doesn’t have to worry. There’s a special room in the Antenora of the ninth circle of hell with his name engraved on the door. There he’ll stay in the company of Anġlu Farrugia.