Is Manuel Delia Malta’s most prolific blogger?

A blogger who posts once or twice a day might be considered prolific. Manuel Delia often posts hard-hitting commentary four or five times a day. He obviously has a lot to say, and Malta needs citizen journalists like him now more than ever following the outrageous assassination of crusading blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia last month. A former full-time political operative – he served as press secretary to Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami and in total spent a decade in PN administrations – Delia has been on the sidelines since unsuccessfully contesting the general elections in 2013. That certainly hasn’t stopped him from speaking out on the issues roiling Malta. He does so, according to his Truth be told blog, by combining his inside knowledge with “some theoretical background and considerable experience in the field” to provide insights that help readers to “scratch a little bit deeper beneath the surface."

Manuel Delia

Delia does more than simply comment on events. He also does important journalistic legwork in an attempt to get to the bottom of the corruption he claims has infected Malta’s government and turned the country into a “Mafia state.” On Sunday, he posted the first part of an interview he conducted with Jonathan Ferris about his investigation of corruption and money laundering in the police force and the FIAU, from which he was recently dismissed. In the explosive interview, Ferris details what Delia describes as “direct Ministerial interference in police investigations and of resource starvation for investigations into crimes committed by high profile people.”

Caruana Galizia herself praised Delia’s work as “excellent”, calling his post-election analysis in June “exactly what I planned to write.”

Right now Facebook is teeming with people who know little to nothing about politics and how parties function, postulating the most ridiculous and facile arguments as to why the Nationalist Party lost this one. . . . When you need to know the reasons for a political event, you need the explanation to come from somebody who has the long view on Maltese politics. And that is not some random businessman, lawyer or stay-at-home mother on Facebook. That is the people who actually know their onions.

One issue Delia has taken a stand on is the intimidation of women who speak out against what is going on in Malta. “I will not stand idly by,” he declared in a blog post last weekend after a high-ranking army officer commented on Facebook that people like MEP Roberta Metsola, who told the European Parliament that law enforcement agencies in Malta are unwilling to protect citizens from a corrupt government, “deserve the gallows”. Delia told Felix Zammit he is “a disgrace to your uniform and an embarrassment to our nation”.

We cannot have another woman in public life demonised and dehumanised for the convenience of the Labour Party until someone decides it is fine to kill her. . . . We cannot stand idly by as women are scared into silence because the few of them who do step up are branded witches and threatened with execution.

Delia’s blog is well worth reading and should be an inspiration to any in Malta who believe in the ability of journalism to shine a spotlight on misdeeds by those who hold power.