Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech has said that nothing will change while the Labour Party is in government as it does not have the “political will” to fix what is wrong with the country.

Grech was speaking at a political activity in Sliema on Sunday, with his speech being solely dedicated to the report published by the board which led the Public Inquiry into Jean Paul Sofia’s death in a construction collapse in December 2022.

Grech said that Prime Minister Robert Abela had told Sofia’s mother Isabelle Bonnici that as long as he was in his post a public inquiry would not happen.

“But because the people rose up and made their voice heard, he had to bow his head. The people won, Malta won, Jean Paul Sofia won, and Isabelle Bonnici won,” he said.

“My message today is one: nothing is going to change while the Labour Party is in government,” he continued.

“Don’t kid yourselves: this is a party which is ready to launder everything – it laundered money, it laundered reputation, it laundered the bad to make it look good, and laundered the good and made it look bad. Don’t let anyone make you look away from what we need to do in this country,” Grech said.

He referred to the Parliamentary sitting when the motion for the appointment of a public inquiry into Sofia’s death was voted upon – and struck down by the government – on 12 July last year.

Grech said that Abela had sworn that he did not want a public inquiry, and kept up his pique with the PN and with Isabelle Bonnici’s heart.  “Why? Because for him the seat of power is worth more than the life of a youngster who lost it in his workplace. His colleagues also felt that their seat is worth more.”

The PN leader continued that had the party not tabled this motion in Parliament, using one of its few Opposition days to do so, then the country wouldn’t have made it to today.  He reminded how the government tried to amend the motion to try to make it worthless, but the party’s MPs had done their homework, and the amendments were blocked.

This, he said, left Abela only one road forward: “to vote against what is right.”

He did this despite over 30,000 people signing a petition for the inquiry and despite Bonnici speaking to MPs one by one outside Parliament to try to convince them.

Grech said that when the conclusions were published on Wednesday it became clear why Abela did not want the public inquiry: “Because it told him that there was nothing right in his government, that everything is going badly, that the institutions are not working, and that the government is not supervising what it should.”

“The road forward for them? Forget everything because they managed to sideline a few people who they appointed ourselves, and say that nobody else is responsible. For us that’s not acceptable,” he said.

He said that these are the same people who told Bonnici that she was being used, that “employed trolls” to try and ridicule her and her campaign, and who refused to implement the recommendations of the Daphne Caruana Galizia public inquiry or fight to get back the money given to Steward Health Care for the fraudulent hospitals concession.

“They never learn so we cannot trust them,” Grech said.

“This government has no political will to fix things. The current situation will continue, so there is one thing which is needed: change. Change which we all need to work towards,” he concluded.

The activity was also addressed by PN MP Jerome Caruana Cilia and PN MEP candidate Norma Camilleri.