I had an uncredited cameo appearance at yesterday leaders’ debate at university. It wasn’t so much an appearance as it was a mention. The moderator, Yasmine Ellul (the star turn of the event) asked the leaders about the implementation of the Daphne Caruana Galizia inquiry recommendations.
In that context Bernard Grech referred to the now notorious Labour Party billboard that included a picture of the now notorious me. The PN leader made the point (which he already had made elsewhere) that Labour learnt nothing from plastering Daphne Caruana Galizia’s face on their billboards in elections past. “The last journalist you did that to, ended up killed in a car bomb.”
On previous occasions Robert Abela ignored that jibe. This time he defended the inclusion of my picture on the negative campaigning billboard. ‘You know you’re talking about a former candidate of your party, right? He’s the one who said he would remove you after the election,’ or words to that effect.
According to Robert Abela then, there are two reasons that justify my inclusion on a PL billboard. I wasn’t put there because I’m a journalist, he claims. I was put there because I’m a former PN candidate (from 3 elections ago) who has criticised the present PN leader, two reasons that justify my inclusion in a poster about the internal divisions within the PN.
Allow me to retort, Mr Prime Minister. Can I suggest a few other people that would pass those two tests and ask you why you didn’t put them on your billboard instead of me? Why not Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Michael Falzon, Robert Musumeci, Franco Debono, or Ian Castaldi Paris? They were all PN candidates in elections past and to some extent or other they have on occasion criticised the PN and or its leader. Why was I put on the billboard, and they weren’t?
Because I’m a journalist. And because you want to discredit my work.
And now that Robert Abela has defended and justified his decision to discredit me in this way, all journalists should be warned that any excuse, however flimsy, will be used to justify acts of intimidation or isolation that an inquiry into the killing of a journalist has already determined are elements in a series of failures and malicious acts that allowed that journalist to be killed.