WATCH: Manuel Delia Recounts What Daphne Caruana Galizia Told Him The Last Time They Met
Journalist-activist Manuel Delia has recounted what Daphne Caruana Galizia told him when they met each other for the last time a few weeks before the 2017 general election.
Speaking during a marathon podcast with Jon Mallia, the first part of which was uploaded yesterday, Delia said he had taken his daughter to a birthday party in Valletta and happened to bump into Caruana Galizia in Strait Street.
This was during the heat of the 2017 election campaign, which then Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said he triggered in reaction to Caruana Galizia’s allegations that the company Egrant belonged to the wife.
“I asked Daphne was on everybody’s mind, I asked her if there were more [stories] to come,” Delia said. “She turned to me and asked me what more I need. I got stunned but I understood; did I need even more from her when she had come forward with what should have been enough evidence for me to make my mind up [when voting]?”
“We passed through the same thing with the Daphne Project (a journalistic collaboration) afterwards. We keep expecting them to publish something that will spontaneously cause the government to collapse or send people to prison.”
“However, what happens is that people aren’t impressed by the truth; they dont instantly absorb its implications.”
Delia co-authored ‘Murder On The Malta Express’, a book about Caruana Galizia’s assassination which won the national prize for literary non-fiction last year.
During his podcast with Jon Mallia, he was challenged on whether he thinks Caruana Galizia had essentially become a mouthpiece for the Nationalist Party prior to the 2017 election.
However, Delia strongly disagreed with this assessment, arguing that Caruana Galizia’s popularity was down to her and her alone and that she shouldn’t be blamed if she had drowned out the PN’s message.
“No one has an obligation to hold their voice back on the grounds that people should be listening to political parties instead. No one used to drag you from your hair and forced you to read her blog.”
Have you listened to Jon Mallia’s podcast with Manuel Delia? What did you think of it? Let us know in the comments section