I met Manuel Delia very briefly and only once when he won the National Book Prize (I was actually very fair and democratic when I was a government executive). We only exchange greetings. I’m a card-carrying member of the Labour Party and a working-class kid from the South who doesn’t like the Nationalist Party even though I supported it in the last elections. Manuel Delia also wrote some very inaccurate things about me in the past, but I don’t care what the Nationalists think about me, so I never retorted.
Today, I find myself in the strange position of having to support Manuel Delia. Ok, Manuel, you have my attention now and you have my support.
Manuel Delia did the right thing in publishing Mario Philip Azzopardi’s script of his play which attacked Daphne Caruana Galizia.
This is not a case of free speech and whatnot. I wrote about this extensively. This is a case of a failed artist, fraudulently posing himself as a successful artist while taking government funds (bought a property with public money as well) to conduct a hate campaign against Daphne Caruna Galizia. MPO is making it ever more clear that his intention with the play is to spread a pro-mafia narrative (he says Keith Schembri is his friend) which delegitimises Daphne and her work and even goes as far as to say that Daphne was not a martyr. It’s also the unofficial position of many Labour Party officials and politicians and they like and fully support what MPO is doing.
To me, this is an official and institutional subversion of free speech and public institutions by the government. Manuel Delia counteracted this subversion by publishing the script of the play and therefore, Manuel Delia did a public duty. By publishing the script Manuel Delia assured us that what Mario Philip Azzopardi was saying in public was false and this is indeed and truly a play against Daphne Caruana Galizia subsidized by public funds. Had Manuel Delia not published the script, Mario Philip Azzopardi would have staged the play while butchering Daphne’s memory to his pro-Labour audience, serving nothing less as a post-election celebratory act, all the while deceiving the general public that he is doing “satirical” plays. He is not. This is Orwellian subversion as promoted and staged by public institutions.
Good for you Manuel.
Nice to see good grace between serious journalists/writers. It might be worth mentioning that Manuel Delia was brought up in a Labour family (a fact I realise you probably know, but some of your readers may not). That makes him only half-bad!
I came here to read about the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra and am very disappointed.