Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament, yesterday included in her whirlwind program a visit to the site where what was left of Daphne Caruana Galizia was recovered after her death in October 2017. Roberta Metsola followed her predecessors and colleagues at the highest levels of European institutions. The visit should be as uncontroversial as anywhere she could have visited. But the controversy here remains because Malta’s own prime minister still thinks it’s beneath his dignity to visit the site, pay tribute, and urge his supporters to stand on the side of journalists, not treat them as enemies who deserve to die.
His stubbornness sows hatred and division in the country, although in this warped place it is Roberta Metsola that is blamed for the division for having visited the site, not Robert Abela for having refused to do so.
There were hundreds of hateful comments on Facebook. The images below are of messages taken from Newsbook’s Facebook page but you will find comments in similar vein on other pages as well.
The first obviously coordinated message is that Roberta Metsola is a hypocrite for not having visited Karin Grech (presumably they mean the scene of her death): that’s the politician’s daughter killed in 1977 by a bomb presumably meant for her father. The argument, such as it is, is that Karin Grech is “tal-Laburisti” and Daphne Caruana Galizia “tan-Nazzjonalisti” and in this country of misguided par condicio you can’t recall the killing of a journalist for doing her job if you don’t genuflect before the altar of Labour’s warped historical narratives.
The other troll central comment that kept coming up was that the visit to the field where Daphne was consumed will have damaged the crops sown in the field. These are people who wouldn’t think to comment when tons of inert material are destructively dumped in woods to improve hunters’ line of sight, or some garden is turned into a paved jungle by some bored government minister.
Underlying all this nastiness is the taunt that persisting in the insistence that Daphne is remembered and justice on her killers is served is in itself a cause for hatred and division. We must all be sheep and bleat when they tell us to, even the President of the European Parliament, or we’ll be branded enemies of the nation, haters of our own country.
Only one thing could have put a stop to that, and that is the prime minister fulfilling his duty to sow unity where division lies. He should tell his people why what they’re doing is wrong. Instead, his agents disseminate coordinated messages to make sure the vilifying nastiness is as galvanised and as hurtful as it could possibly be. Don’t hold your breath.
