"Someone in this country must be responsible," Nationalist Party Leader Bernard Grech said during a political activity held at Birkirkara on Sunday.

"It cannot be that you have a public inquiry conclude that nothing is right, and now no one is responsible," he said, in reference to the conclusions of the inquiry into the death of Jean Paul Sofia.

Grech said that the public inquiry was held even though the Prime Minister had told Sofia's mother, Isabelle Bonnici, the public inquiry would not happen.

"The inquiry found you guilty, how are you still here?" Grech questioned. He continued that there must be political will, and that the Labour government does not have the political will for things to change. He added that there is a need for political responsibility to be carried.

The PN is motioning for Silvio Schembri's resignation and for his political responsibility to be carried, Grech said.

He criticised how the government has taken on the recommendations of the inquiry, particularly in regard to how it has chosen to respond to the need for providing a voice for the vulnerable. He said that a telephone line is not adequate at all, and that the people want direct action.

The Opposition Leader said that this is why the PN is and will remain the voice of those who are vulnerable.

On the matter of the rising cost of living, Grech questioned what the government is doing in this regard, and remarked that it seems it is doing absolutely nothing.

Furthermore, he questioned how the government can be sensitive to what the people are feeling and experiencing when a Sunday Times article reported that internal investigations have taken place within Malta's primary banks regarding the Prime Minister's accounts, and he commented that it seems there are hundreds of thousands of euros which do not have an explicable origin.

"How can you be sensitive when you are locked in an ivory tower? ... You cannot understand the people, because you are not living the people's difficulties," Grech remarked.

He said that just as it came to light why the government did not want a public inquiry into the death of Sofia, it is now known, according to these reports, why the government did not want the PN's proposed law regarding unexplained wealth to come into effect. Grech commented that it would require an explanation for where the millions came from. "Now we know why you did not want this law, Robert Abela."

Nationalist MEP candidate Lee Bugeja Bartolo said that the death of Sofia is a result of the incompetence of the Labour government. He continued that the working method of the government is the creation of different entities that scarcely communicate with each other.

"A comedy of errors, the judge told us ... The responsibility of the state".

 

Bugeja Bartolo said that instead of taking political responsibility and urging the concerned ministers to resign, the Prime Minister has only asked for the resignation of the individuals within the mentioned entities. "Accountability of nothing," he remarked.

He said that any reforms enacted by Abela's government are only done so in order to extend its power.

PN MP Claudette Buttigieg said that the Prime Minister did and said everything he could so that the public inquiry into Sofia's death would not take place.

She said that no one from the PL was courageous enough to stop the PM and tell him that the public inquiry was the right thing to do. Buttigieg compared the Prime Minister's behaviour to that of the French ruler Louis XIV, and she quoted a saying attributed to the ruler, "I am the state."

She said that based on the PM's discourse, he should answer for the shortcomings identified by the inquiry himself.

Grech concluded by urging people to go out and vote in the upcoming June elections, and emphasised that a message needs to be sent that impunity must cease.