We realised that as citizens we watched and read Daphne’s work as some spectator-sport, almost as a form of entertainment from which we were detached. We acted as if we had no responsibility to work to change what was occurring. We had limited our participation in democratic life to casting our ballots in elections but otherwise abdicated our responsibility as citizens in spite of Daphne’s shining example of commitment to the public good, direct engagement and defiance in the face of wrongdoing, institutional bullying and oppressive censorship.
In this sense, we became accomplices in the conscious and coordinated effort perpetrated by her enemies to isolate her, to dehumanise her and to deprive her of the protection that a cohesive, active and participatory civil society should provide to people who are targeted by people in power. While Daphne spoke truth to power, we just looked on as her detractors were creating an enabling environment for her demise.
Of all the failings that led to the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, we opted first to address the failure for which we were responsible, namely a weak civil society with little to no attention given to issues of democratic erosion, corruption, institutional bullying and failure of the rule of law.
In its 2018 opinion “on Constitutional arrangements and Separation of Powers and the Independence of the Judiciary and Law Enforcement,”2 the Venice Commission found that:
“The media and civil society are essential for democracy in any State. Their role as watchdogs is an indispensable precondition for the accountability of Government. The delegation of the Venice Commission had the impression that in Malta the media and civil society have difficulty in living up to these needs. Some interlocutors of the Commission even referred to a prevailing ‘law of omertà’. Even when it is stressful for the authorities to endure their criticism, the latter have a duty to ensure that the media and civil society can freely express themselves.”
We founded Repubblika to address the difficulty of living up to the expectation of the essential role of civil society in a democracy.
The assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia was not merely a catalyst for our existence. It was and remains the defining test of the transformation Maltese democracy needs to undergo in order to live up to that name, not least in respect of the functioning of civil society and in delivering on the indispensable precondition of the accountability of the government.