The government did well to accept the conclusions of the Daphne Caruana Galizia inquiry, however, the inquiry report was wrong to imply that the culture of impunity started after 2013, former prime minister Alfred Sant has said.

The inquiry report issued last week said the government should bear responsibility for the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia because it had created the culture of impunity which led to it.

Sant, writing on Facebook, said the report gave the impression that bad governance started in 2013 whereas the model had been forged and employed much earlier, at least since 1991.

If the situation deteriorated after 2013, that was simply because the goings-on in the previous 20 years showed how easy it was for bad governance to get results.

However honourable the report writers were, they were neither prepared nor inclined, socially, culturally, legally and maybe even politically, to go into this area that crossed party lines, Sant said. 

There, clearly, were much more serious governance issues that were not mentioned in the report but which cumulatively had led to what had happened. They were not created by the government after 2013 but had existed well before.

Clearly, Sant said, an analysis of those structural issues and what they had led to would have required a method which went beyond partisan politics, a practical and direct method about behaviour in public life.