The political leadership of the country – from Joseph Muscat down – systematically branded Daphne Caruana Galizia a liar and a fabricator of fiction, and that for partisan reasons she misrepresented this fiction as truth. These political leaders repeatedly and falsely attributed to Daphne Caruana Galizia opinions or statements she did not hold or make or twisted quotes out of context to miscast her as driven by partisanship or even by unbridled and irrational hatred. People in positions of political power who were exposed by Daphne Caruana Galizia did not respond substantively to her accusations but instead led a dehumanising charge against their accuser.
These threats continued after Daphne’s assassination with regards to developments related to this murder. One example is the behaviour of Josef Caruana, then an officer within the Prime Minister’s private secretariat. He was found by the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life to have breached the public sector’s code of ethics when he published on Facebook the names and ID card number of 304 academics who signed a petition at the height of the December 2019 political crisis. The Commissioner stated that Josef Caruana imparted an ominous ‘we know who you are’ warning to the academics who freely expressed their call for Joseph Muscat to resign.11
On a separate occasion, Josef Caruana lent his credibility as a senior official in the prime minister’s office, a former editor of a newspaper and a Labour Party candidate for a seat in the European Parliament to spread the slander that Matthew Caruana Galizia may have deliberately participated in the murder of his own mother or conspired to hide evidence. He later retracted this but not before the damage was done.
The suggestions that Daphne was murdered by her sons or that her family hid evidence from the police in order to pervert the course of justice is habitually alluded to by government and Labour Party exponents and repeated by their followers.