Jean Paul Sofia was just 20 when he innocently lost his life in the collapse of a factory still under construction in Corradino last December. His parents want to know the whole truth behind the tragedy that robbed them of their son.
The Nationalist Party has backed their call by taking it to parliament and filing a motion demanding a public inquiry. NGO Repubblika has also come out in support, saying concealment is the enemy of the rule of law.
The prime minister disagrees. He argues that a public inquiry would disrupt rather than facilitate the search for truth.
In doing so, Robert Abela seems to be taking the same stand adopted by his predecessor, Joseph Muscat, who had vehemently resisted calls for a public inquiry into Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination.
He later succumbed to local and international pressure. That inquiry did not interfere with the judicial process still underway. Indeed, it provided the public with a bigger picture – a wider perspective of the truth behind the murder.
The “lame excuses” – as Chief Justice Emeritus Vincent De Gaetano had described the ‘reasons’ then brought forward by the government – must stop.
“No knowledge of rocket science was necessary to affirm that a truly independent public inquiry and the judicial organs of the state could, notwithstanding the latter being hampered by endemic delays and lack of resources, work without encroaching upon each other’s territory,” the former chief justice had declared in a 2021 keynote address.
It is unclear whether Abela also has private reasons for rejecting a public inquiry into the Corradino collapse. Sofia’s mother met him recently and told Newsbook: “I felt it was clear that his hands are tied and something is holding him back.”
It is important to distinguish between the goals of a magisterial and a public inquiry. The former, now underway in the Sofia case, will decide whether anybody is to be held criminally responsible for the fatal collapse and preserve the evidence.
The latter would establish whether the state has any responsibility to shoulder and make recommendations to improve the system so as to prevent recurrences – just as the public inquiry sought to do after the Caruana Galizia murder.
Sofia’s parents spelled it out clearly in a forceful statement on Friday: “This was as much the result of inaction by state entities, and administrative, regulatory and legislative failure, as it was the result of actions of persons involved in the site’s development.”
They also recognised it would be counterproductive to pressure the magistrate into acting hastily, calling instead for thoroughness. This rather shows how contradictory it is for Abela to argue that justice requires the institutions to work “in serenity” and then to criticise the inquiring magistrate for the time she is taking to conclude and the police for having failed to charge anyone yet.
The judicial supply chain must take its course. But a public inquiry would initiate a process towards full resolution, especially for the family. And especially given the secrecy with which magisterial inquiries are normally treated. It would also fulfil an essential function under the rule of law: scrutiny of all who wield power and identification of broader responsibility. Only this can bring full justice for Sofia’s parents, as they argue.
Furthermore, only such an exercise would prevent future deaths. Again, as the young man’s parents put it: “A magistrate’s inquest is not capable of identifying state failure, nor administrative, regulatory and legislative gaps, and therefore cannot make recommendations for the elimination of the risk to life and injury at construction sites.”
Surely prevention of future deaths is something the prime minister would like to achieve.