Junior minister says slain journalist reinforced demeaning narrative against Labour women

The slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia “worked tirelessly to prop up demeaning and undignified, elitist perceptions” of Labour women, a junior minister wrote in The Times.

Parliamentary secretary Julia Farrugia, who this week was vilified by the Democratic Party as a “village escort”, used the occasion to remind readers that Labour women have for decades been at the receiving end of attacks on their reputation.

“Insults and attacks on the reputation of female politics are rife on social media… one individual responsible for the reinforcement of this most sexist and appalling narrative was unfortunately a female blogger,” Farrugia said of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Farrugia herself, a former One News journalist and later editor of independent newspaper Illum, was a frequent target of Caruana Galizia, whom she later sued for defamation, successfully.

Farrugia said Caruana Galizia had “gleefully described” the late President and Labour politician Agatha Barbara as a “butch dyke” after her death, inviting readers to trade insults at her.

She said President Marie Louise Coleiro Preca was described as a “perambulating embarrassment to our gender… inarticulate and incompetent.”

She also accused the late journalist of constructing a solid narrative that portrayed Labour women as “dim and uncouth, women who lacked taste… lacked the credentials to become politicians… made bad lovers, bad wives and bad mothers”.

Farrugia says that although she was one of the few with the time to defy her in court, said her reputation was not mended in the aftermath of the defamation suit, saying she was still demonised for her political affiliation.

“Her divisive legacy lives on,” Farrugia wrote, attributing Malta’s under-representation of women in politics to the difficulty women face in entering “a dirty game” that is rife with insults of the sort she endured.