DAPHNE CARUANA GALIZIA

The best way to think of Daphne Caruana Galizia is as a one-woman WikiLeaks, crusading against untransparency and corruption in Malta, an island nation famous for both. To John Dalli, a former European commissioner whom she helped bring down in a tobacco lobbying scandal, Galizia is “a terrorist.” To opposition MPs, she’s a political force of nature, one who fortunately has her guns aimed at the other side of the aisle. “She single-handedly brought the government to the verge of collapse,” says one MP. “The lady has balls,” says another.

Galizia’s mantra is simple: blog relentlessly about the “cronyism that is accepted as something normal here. I can’t bear to see people like that rewarded.” Nothing scandalous is too big or too small, be it false declarations of residency by the beneficiaries of Malta’s cash-for-passports scheme or the evening-wear decisions of the prime minister’s wife.

No one is exempt from Galizia’s digital cross-examination, and her language is invariably scalding. “Education minister blows own trumpet about ethics classes,” is a typical headline. “How much is she paid again?” she wrote in October of a government communications officer. “Enough to cover the cancer treatment of several patients, no doubt. But they’ve got to go begging off charity to get their medication paid for.”

Fear of where her country has headed has made her unapologetically pro-EU.

Whatever one thinks of her style, it’s working. On a good day, Galizia gets 400,000 readers, more than the combined circulation of the country’s newspapers (Malta’s population is 420,000).

When she dines out, guests from other tables come over to wish her well. But her unease with what she sees as the island’s twin scourges — big money and shadowy politics — leaves her bitter. Fear of where her country has headed has made her unapologetically pro-EU: “Over my dead body will my children be stuck on these rocks,” she says.

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