Abela doubles down

After nine years of waiting for justice, the country was left reeling after the jury inexplicably acquitted the man accused of masterminding Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination. That
verdict opened fresh wounds. So how did the country’s leader react? Did he find ways to heal those festering sores, bridge those ghastly divisions, diffuse the simmering tensions, root out the cruel, hateful abuse? No. Robert Abela decided to provoke further fury by appointing Luke Dalli as PBS Deputy Chairman.

Dalli, together with star minister Glenn Bedingfield, was the brains behind the depiction of Daphne Caruana Galizia as a witch on their ONE programme Tanatnejn. Dalli mocked, vilified and dehumanised the journalist on Labour’s TV station, helping to create the very conditions that enabled her assassination. So who better to appoint PBS Deputy Chairman on the ninth anniversary of her murder but the very man who incited hatred against her?

Abela’s decision to appoint Dalli reveals Abela’s cold contempt for basic decency.

Appointing Dalli bang on the 9 th anniversary of her assassination, Abela shows he only has disdain for the bereaved family of the victim and for that growing segment of the population left sickened to its teeth by Labour’s revolting machinations revealed in that trial. Abela brandishes his total disregard for the many international institutions demanding desperately needed changes to the national broadcaster.

By elevating someone who stooped as low as Luke Dalli to senior public-media governance, it sends another message: participation in the humiliation and persecution of journalists carries no meaningful consequence for suitability for public office. Inciting the public against a journalist is no disqualification to running PBS. Dalli’s promotion indicates that anybody who engages in Labour’s dirty work against its critics will be rewarded.

Abela is showing the country and the rest of Europe that he couldn’t care less about the damage he inflicts on his nation, on its reputation and its international standing. What matters to Abela is loyalty to him and to his party. Abela will reward even the most atrocious, deplorable behaviour as long as it benefits him.

For journalists, Dalli’s elevation to PBS Deputy chairman is practical as well as symbolic.

A broadcaster’s governing body should support scrutiny of power and protect journalists from political pressure. Appointing someone involved in publicly degrading an investigative journalist critical of a Labour government will inevitably discourage anybody else from prying too deeply into Labour’s failures. It will have a chilling effect on reporting. PBS staff will certainly be more cautious about even vaguely referring to the government’s maladministration and misrule when they know their Deputy Chairman owes his position directly to the Prime Minister.

Appointing Dalli, whose reported political conduct already raised serious questions under PBS’s own ethics rules, clearly indicates that those rules aren’t worth the paper they’re written on when
political backing is available.

For the wider public Dalli’s appointment continues to erode the confidence in the national broadcaster. Labour captured PBS and transformed it into an additional mouthpiece for the party using public funds. Instead of robust political criticism PBS airs personalised campaigns of propaganda for the Prime Minister and his ministers. With Dalli in post it could only get worse.

As government faces rising criticism of its hijacking of the national broadcaster, both locally and internationally, Abela didn’t choose to acknowledge that criticism, change his ways and ensure that top PBS officials are appointed through a credible, competence-based, independent selection process. Instead Abela handpicked the worst possible candidate – one who publicly mocked and
demonised a journalist, bragged that he was part of PBS’s editorial team while also acting as a Labour party election agent and then ecstatically celebrated Labour’s victory while supposedly
being an “impartial presenter” of a taxpayer-funded TVM programme.

Internationally Dalli’s direct appointment will cause lasting damage. It magnifies the two key concerns raised by European institutions, including the Commission, and media freedom organisations – the lack of accountability after Daphne’s assassination and the corrosive political influence over public broadcasting.

The Commission’s 2026 Malta Rule of Law chapter recognised the serious problems with PBS management-board appointments. It highlighted the Media Pluralism Monitors’ assessment of
Malta as being at high risk because of lack of public-service-media independence, political appointments and failure to cover matters of public interest. Article 5 of the European Media Freedom Act specifically requires editorial and functional independence and transparent, open, effective and non-discriminatory procedures for appointing management-board members using objective criteria established beforehand.

Instead Robert Abela directly appoints a Labour party election representative who concurrently ran a discussion programme (Bla Rispetti) on TVM and who previously mounted a campaign of humiliation of a journalist to the post of PBS Deputy chairman – with no due process whatsoever.

Abela’s provocative decision continues in his vein of defiantly refusing to implement the Caruana Galizia recommendations. The inquiry report recommended reforms at PBS that included
institutional protection against political influence and an impartial, transparent appointment process.

Dalli’s appointment creates greater polarisation, increasing distrust in PBS and is likely to drive more viewers to media aligned to their political loyalities. It also however gives Abela an even
stronger advantage. He’s guaranteed favourable editorial treatment while his adversaries and rivals will be increasingly drowned out.

Abela had already been roundly criticised by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation for appointing Glenn Bedingfield as home affairs minister in light of the inquiry’s findings about
Bedingfield’s vicious campaign against the journalist. Abela’s decision to appoint Dalli doesn’t just intentionally rub salt into the wound, it pours acid right onto its sorest part.
Abela is blatantly using key public appointments as patronage simply to diffuse the disgruntlement and dissatisfaction of Dalli and his entire pushy family.

At the same time Abela is consolidating power and control over PBS. Overruling his own minister to appoint Dalli exposes Abela’s willingness to demonstrate his own power and subjugate his ministers. Abela is telling everybody, especially potential rivals, I do what I like and you can’t do anything about it.

Abela’s latest rotten decision isn’t just poor judgement. It’s a vicious, vindictive and provocative manifestation of his ruthlessness. Abela makes no attempt to reconcile and unify the nation.

Instead he wilfully drives massive wedges right down the middle of our society, widening divisions and amplifying a toxic polarisation that is destroying the nation’s fabric.