Following the rolling of the heads of the acting police commissioner and the sacking of Manuel Mallia over the 'Malliagate' affair, some may be under the erroneous impression that the country has now reached the end of this long and winding, sordid saga.

Now that Dr Mallia's ministerial portfolio has been divided up and redistributed and after the appointment of a new police commissioner, the government may now be under the false impression that it has paid its pound of flesh and that it will now be able to get back to business as usual. 

A pound of flesh has indeed been paid but that will, by no means, be the end of the story.

There are several other matters still to be cleared up, not least of which by a long shot is the matter of the transcripts of the testimony witnesses gave to the board of inquiry tasked with looking into whether there had been an attempted cover-up of the incident on the part of government functionaries and members of the police force.

This newsroom has seen numerous inquiry reports over the years and it should be pointed out that transcripts of witness testimony are rarely reproduced in the reports themselves.  That, however, does not mean that they cannot or should not be published.

This newspaper does not intend waxing pedantic on this single, singular point, but there are a number of reasons why those transcripts need to be published as soon as possible if the public at large is to believe with any sort of confidence that the right heads have rolled and that the right political price has been paid.

For starters, the opposition has challenged the Prime Minister to publish his phone logs from the night in question, insinuating that he had played a direct or at least an indirect hand in the 'cover-up' through his communications chief Kurt Farrugia. 

The argument is that Mr Farrugia was privy to the real details of the events of that night, as has been apparently shown by the transcripts of phone calls published over this last week by the opposition media.  The opposition argues that he could not have acted by publishing that damning press release that described the incident as a hit and run followed by warning shots without the Prime Minister's say so.

Until the Prime Minister publishes those phone logs, a shadow of doubt will always linger over the Prime Minister's actions, or his claimed non-actions, on that night.  The opposition has also taken umbrage over the fact that neither the Prime Minister nor his chief of staff Keith Schembri had been interviewed by the board of inquiry.

On this point, it is abundantly clear that the Prime Minister simply must publish his call logs from the night of 19 November if there is truly nothing to hide.  If he does so, he will well and truly set the record straight in his respect.

Secondly, the transcripts of the testimony of witness who did appear before the board of inquiry must also be published.  As said, it is not standard practice to publish such transcripts and a board of inquiry normally synthesises such testimony in its final report.

This, however, is no standard case.  This is a case in which the home affairs minister - one of the most influential and important ministers a country can have - has been forced to resign over, and one in which the Prime Minister himself is still being called into doubt.  That such doubts linger over the leader of a government should be unacceptable to him.

Moreover, the fact that the board of inquiry's report clearly refer to those transcripts at certain points but has not published them has created certain lacunas in the report that need to be filled.

In the interest of full transparency, the Prime Minister should publish those phone logs and the board or inquiry's transcripts of the testimony it heard must also be published in the best interest of the government and of the nation.