It is “incomprehensible” that Home Affairs Minister Michael Farrugia has not offered to resign after two soldiers were charged with a racially-motivated murder, Nationalist Party MP Mario de Marco has argued.

“The Prime Minister should have been given the option to consider the offer, by ensuring that the army is not guilty of any grave errors in this tragic affair,” Dr de Marco wrote in a Talking Point published by Times of Malta on Tuesday. “It was the right thing to do in the circumstances”.

Two young soldiers face charges of having murdered Lassana Cisse, a 42-year-old Ivorian, in a drive-by shooting in Birżebbuġa last April. They deny the charges.

Investigators say that the suspects, Francesco Fenech, 22, and Lorin Scicluna, 21, killed Mr Cisse purely because of his ethnicity. Both men had been recruited by the Armed Forces of Malta, which falls under the political responsibility of minister Farrugia, during the 2017 general election campaign.

One of the suspects, Mr Scicluna, had in the past received a conditional discharge for an unrelated offence. This did not impact his AFM employment because the case was “not serious”, the minister told the press on Monday.

Dr Farrugia has shrugged off responsibility for the case. According to Lovin Malta, a ministerial spokesman said that “The minister would only be responsible if the soldiers were on the radar. He is also politically responsible for the police force, which solved the case.”

In his Talking Point, Dr de Marco noted that there were several unanswered questions about the AFM’s recruitment procedures.

Earlier this year, an Ombudsman report found that authorities had manipulated army promotions procedures to ensure selected officers were promoted to high-ranking positions.

Michael Farrugia. Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi

Dr de Marco drew on that report in arguing that the army had become an extension of the government's political arm.

“Therefore, by definition, responsibility for any shortcoming by these State institutions needs to be carried by the politician. This is what would have happened in any other democracy,” he wrote.

'We have become immune'

Dr de Marco said he did not hold out too much hope for Mr Cisse's murder to serve as the wake-up call the country needed, drawing on Franz Kafka's bleak novella Metamorphosis for inspiration. 

"Just like Gregor Samsa," he wrote, "we think that if we sleep a little bit longer we can forget all this nonsense. We can forget who we became while we were asleep".

"The sad truth is that we have become immune to what is happening around us". 

Read Dr de Marco’s Talking Point in full.