Parliament will today hold a special session in which an Opposition motion calling for the resignation of three ministers will be discussed.

Naturally, it will not pass, as the government has a strong majority in the House of Representatives, and the three ministers will stay there.

The Nationalist Party has been demanding the resignation of ministers Miriam Dalli, Silvio Schembri and Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi ever since the report of the Jean Paul Sofia public inquiry was released. Sofia, 20, died under the rubble when a building under construction collapsed in Kordin on 3 December 2022.

The scathing conclusions of the public inquiry, exposing so many deficiencies in the way things are done in Malta, led to some resignations of officials who occupied important roles in government entities that were connected with the project.

But no political responsibility has been shouldered. The PN has argued that if the three ministers do not resign, then it should be Prime Minister Robert Abela who dismisses them. But this has not happened either, with the PM tacitly defending his ministers by taking no action in their regard.

Accountability is a word that Maltese politicians have an aversion to, given that over the years there have been very few resignations of ministers even when they were involved in scandalous behaviour. It has not been different this time.

In countries where accountability has a meaning, ministers have resigned for minor shortcomings when compared to the faults Maltese ministers were blamed for.

Dalli, Schembri and Zrinzo Azzopardi have remained in their place in spite of what happened although, with the benefit of hindsight, one now can see why their responsibilities were shifted when the Prime Minister carried out a Cabinet reshuffle in January, a few weeks before the Sofia public inquiry was published.

The PN has been building up the momentum for today’s session via a series of activities and press conferences in which it is listing the reasons why it believes that the three ministers should quit.

The question is: why does the PN bother to file a parliamentary motion calling for the resignation of the three ministers when it knows that the vote which will be taken at 7pm tonight will see its demand turned down?

The answer to this is simple: Firstly, to try and push for political accountability, secondly, the PN wants to pile up the pressure on the government on the matter knowing that the government’s history on this subject is not one it can be proud of. We all remember how the government resisted the idea of a public inquiry, with Robert Abela leading his MPs to vote against another Opposition motion last July, this time to see the establishment of the public inquiry itself.

That time, massive protests in the street had pushed Abela to change his mind and order the inquiry just four days after the government had voted against one.

This time, there may not be protests in the streets to call for the ministers’ resignation, but the PN knows that even when it loses today, it will gain more political ammunition with which to fight its battles in the months to come.