Health&Energy Minister, GWU lawyer, Labour Party lawyer request court to strip me of my right under the law to protect my sources

Labour Party lawyer Pawlu Lia and General Workers Union lawyer Aron Mifsud Bonnici, both acting for their client the Health & Energy Minister, Konrad Mizzi (who was present together with his ‘communications coordinator’ Lindsey Gambin) have requested the court to strip me of my right under the law to protect my sources.

Incidentally, it is a matter of public interest that we be told who is paying these lawyers’ fees – the government, the Labour Party, the General Workers Union or Konrad Mizzi himself in his personal capacity, or whether they are acting on his behalf for free and as a favour.

Labour Party lawyer Pawlu Lia’s argument is that I am not a journalist when I write for this website because this website is not registered under the Press Act (a fascinating leap of logic). Apparently, I am only a journalist when I write for a newspaper. Because you know how it is in the Labour mindset: the practice of journalism does not derive from the act itself but from the fact of registration with, which he appears to view as ‘permission to practice’ from, the government. I wonder what he imagines the parameters for the definition of journalism are in strange and foreign European and North American lands where journalists do not get a little card from the government and nor do their employers.

The request was made in the civil case Konrad Mizzi and Sai Liang Mizzi vs Daphne Caruana Galizia and in the criminal case begun at the request of the Health & Energy Minister and his estranged and very expensive wife, The Police vs Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The magistrate is now obliged to give a ruling on 17 March.

When I said into the microphone of the witness stand “Trid tkun il-vera Laburist biex taghmel xi haga hekk u targumenta b’dak il-mod”, Lia went berserk and began shouting about my “arja” and how I think I’m something special and that I think I can do what I like (and presumably, how he’s going to show me that I can’t), which is the archetypal attitude I have had to deal with from certain Labour Party individuals like him for the last 26 years of my life as a political columnist. They hate three things about me which, coming all together, prove to them totally insufferable: the social class I represent, the fact that I am a woman who doesn’t know my place when men are around, and the fact that I am plainly not in the least intimidated by them but rather the opposite.

In any case, I responded beneath my breath that I thought the Labour Party didn’t do class hatred and hdura anymore because now it’s liberal and progressive, and Lia began quacking like a duck again.

As Lia and my lawyer, Joe Zammit Maempel, argued back and forth before the magistrate, I asked for permission to speak and was met with more shouting by Pawlu Lia, who objected vociferously and continued to belly-ache about how dare I think I can do what I like and say what I like.

Permission to speak was refused, which is a shame because it would have saved them a lot of trouble. What I wished to say was this: that I will go to prison rather than reveal a source, so if the corrupt Konrad Mizzi and his ghastly lawyer Pawlu Lia wish to make a martyr of me, they can go right ahead, do it, and knock another percentage point off the progressive and liberal (and not corrupt) government’s popularity ratings right now.

I’ve had it up to here with these abusive and intolerant savages. They belong in a skip, the lot of them. And Pawlu Lia would do well to find out the answer to the question I asked Konrad Mizzi on my way out of the room (which led to another scene) before he leaps to his defence.

Yes, right, we believe you. There they go, filling their pockets again.