The Nationalist Opposition has once again called on the government to add its Bill on the implementation of the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder inquiry recommendations on parliament’s agenda.

The PN wants its bill, which combines 12 different bills to bring Maltese law in line with recommendations of the Daphne inquiry, to be debated by MPs next year. 

First presented last January, the bill was quickly voted down by government MPs, with Prime Minister Robert Abela dismissing it as a "political gimmick".

In a statement on Friday, PN justice spokesman Karol Aquilina noted that the government had not yet implemented any of the recommendations made by three judges in the inquiry, published 16 months ago.

That inquiry had concluded that the state should be held responsible for the journalist's 2017 assassination.

The prime minister, Aquilina said, wanted the people to forget Caruana Galizia’s memory and was continuing to treat journalists as the enemy, hindering them in their duties.

It was scandalous that more than six years after the publication of the Panama Papers, Joseph Muscat, Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and all those involved in clear cases of corruption had not yet faced justice, Aquilina said.

He added that rather than following the recommendations of the three judges, the Prime Minister presented three Bills related to the media in Malta. These had been drawn up without any public consultation and were solely aimed at reducing rights and basic freedoms.