There are no more ifs, ands or buts, no more delaying as inquiries drag on (or are made to drag on) ad infinitum: Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon must do the right thing and step down of his own accord.

Short of that, he must be forced to step down if the Prime Minister is to emerge from the current political firestorm with any modicum of respect.

Dr Falzon, in actual fact, should have stepped down months ago when it first emerged that he had, in his capacity as parliamentary secretary responsible for lands, signed off on the now infamous Gaffarena-Old Mint Street deal.

And no, Dr Falzon should not resign simply because Joe Cassar did this week - his onus to do so has only grown on account of Dr Cassar’s debacle. The two issues are completely different but, in their differences, there is a common denominator: accountability.

Joe Cassar this week resigned from Parliament after allegations that he accepted gifts, in the form of some €8,000 in works carried out at a property, from Gaffarena senior while he was a Cabinet Minister.  While there was nothing illegal in the act itself, it was highly immoral and in clear contravention of the ministerial code of ethics to which he had been bound.

We make no excuses for Dr Cassar - he committed a political sin and he has paid the ultimate political price for his actions by having resigned first from his party position and then from Parliament.

The accusations against Michael Falzon, a currently serving parliamentary secretary, are far more serious.  Dr Falzon is effectively being accused of defrauding the state to the tune of at least hundreds of thousands of euros and of abuse of power to the benefit of Gaffarena junior.  These are potential criminal offenses, very serious allegations indeed that make those levelled against Joe Cassar pale in significance.

Dr Cassar has done the right thing by stepping down, even if that was the only avenue still open to him.  But Dr Falzon, faced with far more serious accusations, has the brass neck to stay in office seemingly unaffected by the criminal allegations being levelled in his respect.

Of course, Dr Falzon has not yet been found culpable, a second inquiry is now underway by the National Audit Office, and it could be some time now until that is concluded.

In the meantime, things are looking uglier than ever for Dr Falzon.  The opposition, riding on the moral high road in the wake of Dr Cassar’s resignation, yesterday called for Dr Falzon’s immediate resignation, and this newspaper backs that call foursquare.

We do not back that call because we are convinced of his guilt, which is still to be established.  We back that call in the interest of the political accountability that the Labour Party had promised the nation ahead of the 2013 general election but which, close to three years down the road, we have hardly seen a shred.

Real political responsibility is so rare in this country - where the normal rules of political comportment and the levels of what is acceptable from politicians are unmatched in the Western world - that one is hard pressed to cite a recent example.

One needs to go back to 2010 when then parliamentary secretary Chris Said resigned after he was accused of perjury – a criminal charge – during a court case three years earlier, before he entered national politics.  While insisting on his innocence, Dr Said did the right thing and stepped down until his name was cleared.

At the time Dr Said told this newspaper: “I have no regrets about my decision to resign from my post, a decision I took the very moment I learned the police were to press criminal charges. And I was not pressured into doing so by anyone… it was solely my own decision. I was determined to do so for the sake of correctness.

“I have no regrets. I am perfectly content with my decision [to resign].  If I had not done so, I would certainly not be sleeping at night right now.  I felt I simply could not continue serving in that position while facing criminal charges, and now I am also in a better position to fight my case.”

While criminal charges have not been pressed in the Old Mint Street case, at least not yet, Dr Falzon would do well to take similar action.  He should not have to wait for charges to be pressed because he has already been implicated practically inextricably from the Old Mint Street debacle.

The problem is that it has been months on end now.  And if the Prime Minister or Dr Falzon were to do what is necessary, they would be seen to have been pressured into such action by Dr Cassar’s resignation.  This government will certainly not allow itself to be judged on the opposition’s benchmark.  This is the Catch-22 situation the government is facing.

The Prime Minister has vowed more than once to reverse the Old Mint Street deal if it is found to have been illegal, which it appears to have been.  But there is no way of reversing an illegal deal without also taking action against the person who was responsible for it.

The government’s chosen course of action is presumably to await the final results of the Old Mint Street inquiry and proceed on the strength of those results, whatever they may be.  But while the government plays games, it fails miserably on its pledge of political accountability.

This is unacceptable.  The government’s failure to act on Dr Falzon from the outset belies an ingrained arrogance in the country’s governance, which is a far cry from the tenets of good governance, transparency and accountability that it pledged to introduce if voted into power.