Flashback
This is the photograph I had used back then - turned out to be prophetic.
Somebody sent me a link to this post I had written way back in March 2008, just after the general election. It’s about somebody called Franco Debono, a politician whose name I had never heard before that day and whose face I had never seen. This is what I had written about him.
ANOTHER POMPOUS ASS JOINS THE MELEE
As though there are not enough self-important small-town 19th-century Sicilians straight out of Il Gattopardo in this game, here’s another one to add to the general feeling of irritation.
Freshly elected Nationalist MP Franco Debono called The Times to point out that their reporters had made a ‘grave mistake’ in claiming that he might take Helen D’Amato’s seat. The ‘grave mistake’ was that the reporters failed to relay to their readers the important information that he had also – round of applause here – unseated Louis Galea.
‘This is history,’ he told The Times, and then went on to bray, ‘I didn’t say anything when you took the comments of all the other candidates and dedicated only one line to me while others got six lines. I didn’t phone you because of that. I didn’t phone you when you took Galea’s comments twice on two days and not those of the elected MPs….I have huge respect for Galea, but I think a deserve a bit of credit for the fact that I succeeded in this as well (unseating him)”.
When people said they wanted new faces in the mix, I’m sure this wasn’t what they meant.
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Isn’t it fascinating to read his words now, and put them into the context of all he’s said and done since? The pattern and the OCD speech were there right at the beginning, including his trademark manner of saying he has respect for the people he attacks, and that he deserves credit for this or that. Weirdo. Does Malta have a disproportionately high percentage of freaks in the political mix, or is it just my imagination?
Well, not really, I suppose – look at Italy. No wonder it’s Franco’s spiritual home.
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In fairness to Italian and Maltese politicians, I think politicians in other parts of the world are not less ‘psychologically flawed’ to use the term deployed by Tony Blair’s spin doctors to describe Gordon Brown.
If one reads the autobiographies/diaries of Blair, Mandelson, Alastair Campbell one cannot but be shocked at the behaviour of the various politicians.
Last week a British MP was handed down a non-custodial sentence for head-butting other MPs in a House of Commons bar. Numerous other MPS were sentenced to prison for fraudulently abusing the parliamentary expenses system.
Numerous others thought it was cricket to use expenses to claim for building a duck-house or a packet of polos. Jeremy Paxman’s The Political Animal makes the point that politics attracts some very peculiar characters.
Very scary mentality. I have worked with people like this in the past. They literally believe the world revolves around them. The different between my ex-colleague and Franco Debono is that my colleague wasn’t in parliament. Would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.
They swept aside the political class handing power to unelected technocrats the same week he declared his longing to settle there. Italians do not like to challenge fate.
You certainly know how to kick ass!
And he’s back on the front page of the timesofmalta.com. He seems to be living in a make-believe fantasy and pretending he is the PM or leader of a party giving his reactions to the local council results.
Now we will wait for JPO’s reaction which might not be that far.
Today Franco is giving his own version of the result, he cannot stay away for so long from the limelight.
There is no need for anyone’s version of what they think has happened. It is so obvious. People are fed up of having their TV sets and radios hijacked by the parties’ propaganda machines that they had enough of the bullshit long before the election day itself, and opted to stay away from the polls.
I beleive local councils are useless and are serving only the parties to tighten their grip on peoples’ lives.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120312/local/debono-sees.410776
I would like to ask Dr Franco Debono what he did to help the PN candidates in the fifth district, and if he believes so much in the Local Council Elections why is it that informed sources (a PL activist) say that he and his family didn’t go to vote in the Hal-Ghaxaq Local Council election of 2006!
Malta is waiting for an explanation.
By any chance ,did anyone see him voting in Marsaxlokk?
I really cannot understand what The Times of Malta’s agenda is with Franco Debono. They are giving him space and forever asking his “opinion”.
If it wasn’t for The Times we would hardly hear about him. And that’s how it should be.
This is the first and definitely last time I will comment about him. Let’s all do the same and let him vanish into the background.
And here goes a good old Maltese saying: ‘Il-gurnata minn filghodu turik.’