It was a terrible tragedy that first week of December last year when 20-year-old Jean Paul Sofia lost his life under a huge heap of construction rubble. A tragedy that shocked a whole nation. A senseless tragedy for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I am not one who holds great belief in the scope and utility of public inquiries. True, we did have one following the brutal assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, even if it was after persistent insistence from various quarters that eventually identified the causes leading up to her murder. After that, we had another one inquire into Bernice Cassar’s murder. In both instances, the conclusion was that the state was mainly responsible for failing to see and read the signs that were being written on the wall. In both cases, a series of recommendations were listed. In the former, some were taken on board while others were simply ignored. In the latter, basically none of them were seriously considered.

Jean Paul’s grieving mother, Isabelle Bonnici, is still pleading with the prime minister and other officials to hold a public inquiry into her son’s premature and tragic death. Her pleas have been falling on deaf ears, and this, in itself, raises more questions than it answers. If there is one instance in which I strongly believe in the need for a public inquiry to be launched, it is specifically Jean Paul’s death.

I cannot continue sitting back and watching Isabelle heartbrokenly and in vain plead for a public inquiry to establish the causes that led to her son’s fatality and who is responsible for it. This is why I am here, taking up her cause publicly and making her plea mine.

It is one youngster’s tragedy, but it is one of public concern. We have been having too many construction fatalities, which clearly point to something, somehow, somewhere, absolutely wrong and which needs seeing to as soon as possible before other similar tragedies happen. The respective magisterial inquiry cannot and will not address all of these issues. It will simply gather all the evidence available and conclude whether anyone is to shoulder criminal responsibility.

In Jean Paul’s case, a public inquiry is warranted, and the focus should be to establish the facts, find out what happened, why it happened, who may be accountable, and try to learn lessons to prevent a recurrence of the events. This inquiry, by law, can only be launched by the prime minister himself or by the minister responsible for the construction sector.

The continued reluctance of the government to launch this public inquiry is utterly incomprehensible in the circumstances, and we can only infer that there is much embarrassing information and facts that had better remain unknown or not be publicly disclosed.

A public inquiry needs to be commissioned. One of the first steps in commissioning this public inquiry is to appoint the chair. This is a very important appointment, and the chair will need to have sufficient expertise and independence to be credible in a role that will definitely come under a great deal of public scrutiny, as well as the time and experience to be able to conduct what will certainly be a lengthy process involving a large amount of oral and written evidence.

The chair should run this inquiry, decide the procedural rules and protocols, and have ultimate responsibility for the conduct of the inquiry, the publication of the final report, and the recommendations. The chair should be free to act alone, have the assistance of panel members, or appoint experts. Any panel members appointed should ensure that the inquiry panel as a whole has the correct level of expertise to undertake the inquiry.

I unequivocally denounce the decision of the government to stubbornly refuse to hold a public inquiry into Jean Paul’s death. It should be clear that many institutions and a number of individuals have a lot to answer for in this tragedy, but the government nonetheless continues to avoid a genuine, thorough, and independent investigation into a fatality that should not have happened in the first place had all the relevant and necessary statutory and regulatory safeguards been conformed with and duly supervised and enforced. The government instead conveniently contends that any further investigation be left to the inquiring magistrate, knowing full well that in doing so, the whole truth will never be revealed.

Newspapers and politicians often lament the time and money inquiries spend delivering their terms of reference. Changes in the timetable are framed as delays to a service rather than an unavoidable consequence of following the evidence or ensuring those who need to be questioned are called to give testimony. Costs are presented without context and rarely weighed against the present or future value of the work they represent. These are, of course, handy rocks to throw at inquiries from commentators, MPs, and others who, perhaps, resent losing control of the narrative. Many of these missiles miss the target as far as the wider public is concerned.

Events like those of Daphne, Bernice, and Jean Paul Sofia involve government or other powerful institutions, and circumstances require a process that is visibly independent from them. When something has gone very badly wrong, there is no other credible mechanism to find out how and why except for a public inquiry.

So what can be done in the face of the government’s stubborn refusal to hold a public inquiry into Jean Paul’s tragic case and future cases that undoubtedly warrant a thorough investigation?

Just consider this case. Marina Litvinenko, widow of Alexander Litvinenko, who died in London in November 2006, sought a judicial review of the refusal by the Secretary of State for the Home Department to order the setting up of a statutory inquiry into the suspicious circumstances of the death. In a judgment of the UK High Court of Justice of February 11, 2014, the claimant’s request was upheld on the basis that the government’s proposition that a statutory inquiry would be incapable of achieving any useful purpose was a bad one. The court held that the Secretary of State’s refusal to set up an inquiry was so obviously contrary to the public interest as to be irrational.

I contend that it is high time that we introduce a similar judicial remedy within our administrative and legal systems in order to afford just and effective redress for individuals like Isabelle Bonnici who, despite laudable efforts to explore all possible channels in search of truth and justice, remain at the mercy of the powers that be. 

Dr Mark Said is a lawyer