When Isabelle Bonnici first doorstepped Robert Abela, the prime minister heard her out and offered some platitudes. On Wednesday, having dashed her hopes in parliament, he did not have the courage to look at her as he hurried into his ministerial car. 

The way the government handled this may end up poisoning popular sentiment against the Labour Party in a way that even the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia could not. 

Daphne came with political baggage, and that made it easy for Labour’s grassroots to dismiss her murder, or at the very least ignore it. Sit in a PL village club for long enough and you’ll eventually be told “she had it coming”. 

But what can they say about Jean Paul Sofia, a 20-year-old who voted Labour and worked a blue-collar job? 

In theory, Labour exists for people like Sofia. Wednesday’s vote in parliament exposed that sham for what it is. 

Some voters might not understand the difference between magisterial and public inquiries, but you don’t need a law degree to interpret the distressing sight of ministers being whisked away in their luxury vehicles as police officers move grieving men and women out of their way. 

Isabelle Bonnici comforted by PN MP Paula Mifsud Bonnici. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

The damage to Labour’s brand was immediately evident. Card-carrying party members rushed to distance themselves from the government vote. Commentary on social media was almost universally critical. 

Publicly, the government says it is against a public inquiry in the Sofia case because it is not needed. The magisterial inquiry underway will reveal the same things, they say. That is not true. 

Privately, government members argue that appointing a public inquiry in this case risks setting a precedent. Public inquiries are long and costly affairs, they argue, and Malta’s backlogged judicial system does not have the resources to handle a raft of them. 

That argument does not really hold water, though, because it ignores the key difference between Sofia’s death and various others, such as that of Miriam Pace in 2020. 

The building collapse in Corradino last December. Photo: Jonathan Borg

The building that collapsed on Sofia was built on government land that INDIS Malta leased to a prominent Lands Authority official, whose involvement was obscured by having his business partner listed on the paperwork. 

INDIS has since cancelled the lease but made no public statements. Its CEO quietly resigned one month after the Sofia tragedy, and his replacement also quit six months later.

The lease holder is still employed by the Lands Authority. The minister responsible for both those entities, Silvio Schembri, has said nothing. Abela, no stranger to oddly-structured property deals, has also remained largely quiet. 

You can see signs of the government’s bloody fingerprints all over the Sofia tragedy, which is why a public inquiry, in this case, is so essential. Unfortunately, our system of inquiries – both magisterial and independent – is poorly designed. 

There is no incentive for magistrates to quickly wrap up their inquiries or to make their findings public. As we revealed some months ago, there are 1,700 open magisterial inquiries, including one from the 1970s and five from the 80s and 90s. 

Jean Paul Sofia was aged 20.

As for independent inquiries, such as public ones, the main problem with them is even more glaring. Such inquiries are intended to investigate possible shortcomings in the conduct of public officers, government bodies or government services. So how should it be the government itself deciding when that is necessary?

The problem with turkeys is that they never vote for Christmas. It cannot be the government to decide when it should be investigated. In the Caruana Galizia case, it did so reluctantly and only after concerted international pressure. Isabelle Bonnici and her dead son, Jean Paul Sofia, are not as well connected. 

We cannot rely on government MPs to decide when the government’s actions should be investigated. They have no incentive to do so. Aside from wanting to toe the party line, many of those MPs are in the direct employment of the government. There must be a different method of establishing when an independent probe is needed.