Gossip blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia yesterday denied having alleged that MaltaToday managing editor Saviour Balzan had ‘got someone pregnant’, in response to an equally vehement denial issued by Balzan the day before.
Reacting to an earlier blog post published on March 23, Balzan on Monday categorically dismissed as untrue Caruana Galizia’s claims of his imminent fatherhood.
“I refer to the comments by Mrs Daphne Caruana Galizia who wrote that I got someone pregnant,” he said. “I declare that this is an outright lie and is defamatory.”
Balzan also categorically denied claims made by Caruana Galizia that he had attended a party hosted by a magistrate at a time when he still had a case pending before that magistrate. In actual fact, the case had already been concluded and the judgement went against Balzan.
Responding to yesterday’s statement, Caruana Galizia suprised her own readers by disavowing ever having made the pregnancy allegation on her blog in the first place.
“Saying that he ‘got somebody pregnant’ is defamatory. I agree,” she wrote yesterday. “But I never said that.”
Evidently, Caruana Galizia’s memory is not quite as sharp as her tongue. Contrary to what she wrote yesterday, she very clearly inferred both a pregnancy and that Balzan was to be the father – in no uncertain terms.
This is what she wrote, alongside a picture of a stork carrying a newborn baby, in a post published on 23 March: “This blog is first with the news. Saviour Balzan is soon to become a daddy for the first time.”
Provided that Caruana Galizia did not have either parthenogenesis or adoption in mind – i.e., the former being a process common to some species of fish and amphibians, which are capable of reproducing without intercourse – the phrase ‘becoming a daddy’ is instantly and incontrovertibly connected with the act of ‘getting someone pregnant’.
The March 23 blog entry was in fact very clearly and deliberately aimed at creating and disseminating this false impression. And indeed, that is how the online gossip was duly received, with rumours about a non-existent pregnancy doing the rounds based entirely on Caruana Galizia’s deceitful statement.
Faced with a stark denial, Caruana Galizia yesterday bent over backwards in an attempt to distance herself from her earlier, slanderous claims. However, at some points her normally eloquent prose descended into gibberish:
“I think the question everyone is asking here is not whether Saviour got somebody pregnant, but how he could have possibly managed to do so in the absence of a denial that he hasn’t got balls.”
‘In the absence of a denial that he hasn’t got balls?’ No, we didn’t understand that, either...
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