The tail wags the dog
Franco Debono - his motivation is most likely the fact that Manuel Delia, right-hand man to Austin Gatt, is going to stand for election on the district he considers his personal territory.
This was my column in The Malta Independent last Thursday.
If the Nationalist Party does not come down hard on Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Franco Debono and Jesmond Mugliett, the electorate will come down hard on the Nationalist Party.
If the prime minister does not ram, especially, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando firmly back into his box and sit on it, the electorate will do that to him.
Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando almost lost the Nationalist Party the last general election. Now he is going out of his way to inflict as much damage as possible and lose the next one.
If he has secretly switched to Labour and failed to inform the Speaker, then he is a fool (but we knew that already). Labour will use him until 2013 and then fail to take him on.
Even a party which needs to fill its skip will not burden itself with the sort of problems they have seen him create over the last three years or so. Pullicino Orlando faces a future doing little more than look into people’s mouths in a world where dentists don’t make the news or score the front page, and it frightens him.
People can tolerate many things, even violence and corruption, as we have seen in our unfortunate past. But they cannot stand weakness in the face of unbridled defiance, hostility and what appear to be increasing manifestations of personality problems.
Lawrence Gonzi, in his role as prime minister and his other role as party leader, is being publicly and constantly humiliated by the behaviour of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando. Jeffrey clearly thinks this makes him a hero. How misguided he is. He has completely lost the trust of his own constituents and he is regarded as a hero by Labour supporters about as much and in the same way as Nationalist supporters looked at Mintoff for bringing down the Sant government. We were happy about it, but it didn’t win our respect.
It is not what Pullicino Orlando says and does which humiliates the prime minister, because Pullicino Orlando has scant credibility and is neither trusted nor respected. His shouting and tantrums on television, and his obsessive-compulsive inappropriate use of Facebook have long since put paid to that, even if the barefaced lying did not.
Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando humiliates the prime minister in a way he cannot even begin to understand, because he actually believes what he is saying. He humiliates him by exposing the prime minister’s, his party leader’s, inability to control him.
Pullicino Orlando weakens the prime minister not by the specifics of what he says and does, but by showing the electorate on a now daily basis that the prime minister has neither the will nor the ability to do anything about it.
The public perception is that Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Franco Debono are running the country by default, by holding the balance of power in the House and deciding which votes should pass and which to block or defeat. The tail is now wagging the dog.
When Hillary Clinton stopped off in Malta en route to Tripoli, the significance of the visit was obscured by the fug of ill-feeling created by Franco Debono’s spiteful foot-stamping and Pullicino Orlando’s bitter hysterics.
Stooping to conquer is a sign of strength, yes, and the public can read it as such. So when the prime minister and Mrs Gonzi went to Franco Debono’s home after he failed to turn up to parliament for an important vote, electors were angry but on reflection they did not see this as unnecessary debasement. They worked out that needs must when the devil drives, and moved on to the next thing.
Now, in retrospect, we can see that the whip should have cracked down hard, because it is dangerous and ultimately self-defeating to appease that kind of personality.
When the humiliation is chronic and, more crucially, when it escalates and when Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and now Franco Debono continue to raise their game, pushing at the boundaries like the teenage children of weak-willed older parents who are frightened of them and cannot handle the situation, then public perception shifts.
The comparison to angry and aggressive teenagers and weak older parents is a good one, because what usually happens in such situations is that there is escalation to the point where the parents are beaten up and overpowered completely.
Public perception has shifted dramatically and seriously. The prime minister is no longer seen as a patient and much-tried man coping with the tedious antics of two difficult MPs. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando is now perceived as dangerously unstable and the prime minister is seen as completely unable to handle him.
In the electorate’s eyes, that is a perilous situation.
The prime minister cannot communicate the message that he can handle the running of the country when he can’t even handle a party backbencher who shows signs of deepening emotional disturbance.
Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando is a problem not because he opposes his own party’s policies and measures. He is a problem because a person who has ceased to act rationally no longer belongs in parliament. Certain aspects of his behaviour, including the obscenities he has now taken to uploading on Facebook even in the middle of the night, should also be attracting the attention – and action – of the Speaker of the House, part of whose duty it is to ensure that no member of parliament brings the House into disrepute.
Now we have Franco Debono actually telling his own party what to do. Imagine that. He has asked – for which read ‘told’ – the Nationalist Party’s executive council to discuss his threat to abstain from a parliamentary vote on the Opposition’s demand for Austin Gatt’s resignation.
Instead of the Nationalist Party cracking its whip, literally and figuratively, and snapping this man back into line, it sits there and takes it in the face. Sign of strength? It would be, if the public didn’t know already that it’s Debono who has all the leverage here because his party bosses, by debasing themselves before him, have lost his respect.
The golden rule with bullies – and I’m something of an expert in this because I spend most of my life dealing with them – is to face them down, to tell them ‘Go ahead, do your worst.’ The worst thing you can do with people who have this kind of bullying personality is to appease them, or to sit there and take it. The way to deal with them is to see them off by beating them at their own game.
When you appease them by allowing them to bite off your fingers, they come back and eat your arm, then keep right at it until there’s nothing left of you, even if they die gorging themselves in the process.
At every step of the way, too, it is crucial to remember that people with this kind of bullying temperament are inevitably not particular bright (if they were, they wouldn’t behave in such an unsubtle manner or have such tangled reasoning) so it is that much easier to stampede them into a corner.
Mintoff used violence, fear and intimidation with people who got in his way. By far the more effective way, because it doesn’t have negative side-effects is Fenech Adami’s moral strength and steadfastness, which compels respect.
I cannot for the life of me imagine Fenech Adami allowing Franco Debono and most especially Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando to run riot like this, bringing the government, the Nationalist Party and even parliament into disrepute.
So what would he have done? He would have asserted his authority, and they would have been marginalised. The absolutely worst thing you can do to a bully is to marginalise him, because bullies cannot operate along and depend on the support of a gang. Remove the gang they think is backing them, and the gang they will suddenly want to belong to is yours.
The man who feels he is marginalised does not continue to throw his weight around in the way these three unpleasant individuals are doing. They throw their weight around because, deluded as they are about their own importance and achievements, they feel that they are in the right and that they have the support of others within their party and even of the electorate.
When Eddie Fenech Adami said on Bondi+ last week that he would never have tolerated Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s behaviour in going behind his back and that of his party, he meant it. And we knew it. But Pullicino Orlando would never have dared behave like that with Fenech Adami, because he would have known it too.
He behaves this way with the prime minister because he knows he can. He is inflicting death by a thousand cuts and he fully intends to protract it over the remaining 18 months in a very public display of torture and humiliation.
It has made us despise him, but he doesn’t care. He is too far gone for that and actually thinks that the false adulation of sub-literate Labour voters on Facebook is a substitute of the respect of those who put him in parliament.
If the prime minister does not act immediately to stop the torture and humiliation, the electorate will seek an end to this intolerable situation by pressing for an early election.
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The common factor with ALL candidates who don’t toe the party line both from the PN and from the MLP is that they think that they were voted in because they were good and not because they were on a party ticket.
People vote in candidates like the first mayor of Rabat Gozo, and would not vote for a university professor.
But when the roumour goes round in the party that that candidate is in bad light of the leader , the candidate can be considered politically dead.
Just before the 1987 election Dr Josie Muscat was kicked out of the party because he formed a party within a party, the Front Freedom Fighters.
Franco Debono and JPO should be divested of their government responsibilities and not be seen near their party leader.
Naturally the PM should not do a Sant and paint himself in a corner like the latter did when Mintoff challenged him in parliament.
The joys of having an incumbent government with a one seat majority.
But what are you suggesting?
Let’s say Dr. Gonzi links a vote in parliament to a confidence vote and he loses it. What then? Another Alfred Sant.
[Daphne – Confidence vote? As if. All he has to do is start reminding them who’s boss, and making sure that everyone else knows it too and that anybody caught conspiring with people like Jeffrey is going to be sidelined along with him. He’s tried inclusion, chairmanships, trips with the boss to America, and none of it works (obviously, because it’s like Hitler with Poland). So now it’s time for the opposite tactic.]
Wouldn’t it be more wise to hack it out till the end and leave it to the voters?
The problem I foresee is that if voters think that the PN may win by a very small margin and we would end up having the same situation for another 5 yrs, that would certainly be a put off.
Hitler with Czechoslovakia, you mean (Poland worked in the sense that the Allies finally decided they’d had enough). But, if you’ll permit me to continue the analogy, we clearly need a Churchill.
According to TYOM it is actually a cunning plan by Gonzi to get rid of Austin Gatt by using Franco Debono.
All I can say is…. Wow
[Daphne – Yes, some idiot’s already called in here repeating it.]
Why does Austin Gatt keep repeating the absurd theory that the “PN will win the elections furing the next 20 years”.
He repeated it during Bondi+ when he was discussing Smart City.
Is he aiming to decrease further the already low chances of the PN winning the next elections?
Obviously de does not care anymore, since he won’t be running for office.
1. Austin Gatt has already said that he is not contesting the 2013 election.
2. These are the times when I miss Dr Fenech Adami at the helm of the PN.
3. Franco Debono is just trying to steal the limelight from Mad Jeff.
4. Jeffrey never forgave Dr Gonzi for not giving him a cabinet post. He thought he deserved one despite what he did and having lied about it.
5. Kellhom bzonn Mad Jeff, Franco u Jazmond ghandhom il-lealta li ghandu Austin Gatt lejn il-PN. L-anqas jafu xi tfisser lealta.
The problem with that theory is that Austin Gatt announced his ‘retirement’ long before Franco Debono started his rants about the ARRIVA situation.
The real ploy is that while Franco comes across as going after Austin’s hide, his main objective is to embarrass the Prime Minister, no more and no less.
The NP will miss Austin Gatt, warts and all, but we will collectively sigh in relief and bid good riddance to Franco Debono, anytime.
I will not vote for PN if Franco and Jeffrey are on the PN ticket.
Just don’t vote for Franco, Jeffrey, Mugliett, whatisname the MP cum consultant too busy to attend parliament; hmm the list keeps getting longer.
Dawk it-tlieta ma jaghmlux il-PN. Hemm hafna ohra minn fejn taghzel.
Tahseb li m’hemmx partitarji tal-LP li ma jaqblux ma min se johrog bhala kandidat tal-LP? Ghalfejn tahseb li Joseph qed jara kif jaghmel biex iressaq ucuh godda lejn il-partit?
Tidher bniedem intelligenti biex ma tafdax lil dawn in-nies, ma jfissirx li m’ghandekx tafda partit shih, li gab lil Malta ‘l quddiem f’dawn l-ahhar 20 sena.
If the tails wags the dog, just cut off the tail. The dog will survive, but the tail won’t.
The lives of our politicians are becoming the nation’s favourite soap opera.
We focus on their lives, petty arguments and daily motions. What is happening in the rest of the world (that is the real world) can just wait and take the back burner.
But what can you expect from a country where all national TV and radio stations are incessantly blaring out disco music, as if we are all 13 year olds dancing all the way to Paceville (no wonder DJs become politicians here) and transmitting soap operas a la Maltaise (starring very brusque and deranged characters).
Malta has somehow become even smaller than it actually is.
How have we come to this?
http://www.dissett.tv/Dissett_11_12/Dissett.html
Id-Dħul tad-Divorzju
This is what the future minister of justice has up his sleeve.
Listen from 53min onwards and Dr Fenech Adami’s reply at 55.50mins
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20111023/local/gonzi.390425
Franco’s mistake is to divide the country along Labour’s self imposed borders. This inhibits his thinking, making him the perfect pawn, stuck in their mentality.
What he seems to consistently ignore is that the PN is the exact opposite, demanding from each representative the capability to identify shared values and most importantly, their implementation within social strata and across artificial lines.
His characterial traits depict the national deficiency, an emotional attachment to irrational motives, something Labour masterfully exploits.
He should be working to its eradication, not manifesting its symptoms. It’s why the PN is the party entrusted with government and Labour perenially sent to the opposition benches.
As usual, a very valid analysis of a serious problem.
I would like to strongly differ on the use of three words, however. Yes, just three words.
Humiliation, humiliated, humiliates.
I would have said harassment, harassed, harasses.
It will take much more than these three clowns’ concerted effort to humiliate Lawrence Gonzi.
I agree. I think they are crossing the line now.
Well said, Daphne.
A politician persuades the people that they really want what he wants.
My question is: what do these three politicians want?
To be adored.
How exactly can an electorate press for an early election?
I would prefer an early election than such bullying.
Nobody would dare do such a thing to Mintoff because he’d be better dead than alive.
If the three you mentioned think that they will ever be trusted by the MLP they are mistaken. The MLP is only using them in an effort to destabilize the PN.
Does JPO think of what his political future will be once Labour no longer have use for him?
Joseph might consider using him as a journalist with The Times. At least until the Labour marmalja decides to burn it down again.
Spot on Daph. Prime Minister Gonzi should stop being a ‘good’ man and show his worth by telling these three goons where to get off.
Worth taking the risk rather than keep on being blackmailed until the general elections. Good luck, Dr Gonzi – you need it but we stand four square with you.
I get the feeling that Franco Debono is neither the rebel nor the bully, but is being egged on by his own party and will probably be rewarded for it, because Austin Gatt has become a humiliation for the PN.
[Daphne – Tin-foil hat time, my dear.]
This minister has screwed up the bus transport system and Smart City, apart from passing obnoxious comments which do not go down well with uncertain voters.
Incidentally, Maltatoday have published a survey today that places Austin Gatt as the least popular minister, even viewed negatively by Nationalist supporters.
He is a liability to PN, not a bonus.
Whilst in previous years people might have given him the benefit of the doubt that behind the wall of arrogance lies an achiever, it is now more obvious that this minister totally lacks forward planning, something which is absolutely necessary when implementing projects of a certain size.
The qualities needed to back his abrasive persona just aren’t there.
A short while ago Franco Debono posted this comment on Facebook:
“If the Nationalist Party does not come down hard on those who have taken decisions which have caused suffering to thousands of people, costing the state millions of euros, the electorate will come down hard on the Nationalist Party. Just like the 1996 general election where Pn lost mainly due to arrogance”.
He was criticised heavily, with most of the comments telling him that he is not being loyal to the PN.
He reacted: “jekk trid tkun taf x’inhi lealta hares lejn l ghaxar snin li ghamilt kandidat mal PN mill-1998 sal-2008 u qatt ma tkellimt avolja kont stmat hazin mill-Partit. jigi z-zmien u nghidlek aktar sur”.
Franco Debono, teaching us about loyalty.
The Prime Minister must come down really hard on the subversive rebels in the ranks of the Nationalist Party – even if that would imply an early election.
Having said that, it is the Prime Minister’s prerogative to decide when to call that early election to the best advantage to the party and to the nation.
For that end it is essential to prepare wisely for an eventuality that would spell the political doom of the rebels but would at the same time enhance the prestige of the Prime Minister and the Nationalist Party in the eyes of the electorate..
Since the present government has a thin majority, a confrontation with any government MP can bring instability to the government besides showing the ruling party as lacking in unity.
There are different leadership styled based on the character of the leader. Probably the “soft” approach is the least risky method in this case. In the case of the transport system, some government MP’s are, in my view rightly, airing the concerns of their constituents and the general public.
Daphne, not only this is a great article and in my opinion it is the most important article you have written so far during this legislature. I sincerely, hope Dr.Gonzi reads it.
You wrote, “he would have asserted his authority”. But I say how exactly?
In a parliamentary system as we have, the prime minster of the day has to put up with unruly MPs as it is part of the democratic process.
This is a major flaw in our system of government, as a US model of government, troublemakers like these would be no position to threaten democratically elected leader.
Unfortunately the Prime Minister is really in a very difficult spot.
With a little knowledge I have, can the Prime Minster ask JPO or Franco Debono for their immediate resignation without risking the PN majority in the house?
[Daphne – No, of course not. But there are others ways. In an organisation the team leader is respected not just because of the fear of being sacked. In fact, that is often the least of it. The problem here is that the right steps were not taken at the outset. Nobody knew whether the best way to handle people with personality problems of that nature was to appease them or slap them down hard, and the first option was chosen, which turned out to be the wrong one. With a well-respected psychiatrist in the cabinet, more options could have been explored, and perhaps they were. But now it has come to this.]
They are being disloyal to the party after they swore under oath to be loyal. They are in parliament thanks to their party and to the people who voted for that party.
I can’t see what crucial choices the PM has other then to call early election and forbid these disloyal individuals for standing ever again under the PN ticket.
It is not an easy decision for the PM and there are no easy answers.
In hindsight Dr. and Mrs Gonzi made a big mistake going to Franco’s house. It made the PM look desperate [Daphne – And it also made Franco Debono look psychologically unsound, because it had occurred to nobody before that this might be the case, and now it’s all people can talk about] but now has weakened him badly and empowered Franco.
Dr. Gonzi is a decent and very patient man and he is praying that his government will survive until his term. Perhaps the PM wants to let the electorate to do his job by not electing JPO and Debono again.
These disloyal and ungrateful MPs must realize that the people chose Dr. Gonzi in the last election over Sant because they trusted their future and their children’s future in him.
Empowered Franco to do what, exactly? If he brings down the government – his threat, however he may put it – he sinks with the rest of them, in and out of parliament, unless he plans to emigrate when the PL is elected.
@ Daphne
I agree with your comments to Matt. However let us not forget that the respected psychiatrist was not in the Cabinet from the onset of the legislature. Initially, the Ministry in question was headed by the prisoner in the EU.
In this picture’s caption you wrote about the nipping in the bud of Manuel Delia. Well now I am completing the puzzle.
We will have an anonymous letter about Manuel Delia on the eve of the election, you wait and see.
I am no Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes, but all one has to do is to dig in the recent past of our elections. Was it 1998 when Herman Schiavone had to resign because of an anonymous letter on the eve of that election?
He was the next in line to be by-elected by less than a 100 votes if Louis surrendered his fifth district seat.
Today I received a flyer from this candidate Herman, and concluded that this poor fellow was a victim of a cowardly act: an anonymous letter.
He wouldn’t be accepted to contest with the PN if the anonymous letter was true.
Oh and I nearly forgot, the PN brought in Franco Debono to replace Mr Schiavone in that election.
X’kumbinazzjoni hux?
I will investigate further when I have time on my hands. Until then watch out for any dirty tricks in the fifth district.
Clarification: He was the next in line to be by-elected by less than a 100 votes if Louis surrendered his fifth district seat in the previous election, 1992(?)
People complain about anything.
I’m not saying that the transport is good, but I think that slowly everything will settle to the good.
I use transport three times a week, I did complain about the new stages, hopefully they will be fixed, but for Franco to make such a big fuss about it there’s something else which is bothering him, and he is using this excuse.
Franco if you don’t want to be part of the PN, please resign peacefully, don’t try to bring down the government because people will hate you then. They don’t vote for you if you do such an act.
If you want do be a minister you have to work very diligently and be patent, so may be if PN will be in power in 2013 you might stand a chance.
By bringing the government down you won’t be a minister and your dream won’t come true.
So don’t be silly, pull together with the rest and do a good job.
AUSTIN GATT is the most intelligent person the PN ever had. Transport is and always was a headache for any government but Austin had the guts to reform it.
Some research for a good cause:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20030330/local/candidates-and-districts.153324
“District 5 (Marsaxlokk, Ghaxaq, Birzebbuga, Zurrieq, Qrendi, Mqabba, Safi)
Qrendi returns with this district which is another comfortable one for the MLP. In 1996 it was very close to electing a fourth MP but the PN reversed this negative result and elected two candidates with a surplus of more than 1,000 votes. Missing from the PN list will be Hermann Schiavone, who polled 1,587 votes in 1998. He withdrew his candidacy after an anonymous letter alleging his involvement in certain abuses, addressed to the Prime Minister and the Police Commissioner. His wife Anne will be contesting instead.
“Ministers Louis Galea and Ninu Zammit will once more contest this district. The former has been elected since 1976 and Mr Zammit since 1981. MP Helen D’Amato will also be contesting. They will be joined by lawyers Franco Debono and Helga Zahra, Qrendi councillor Nadine Sciberras and John Schembri.”
http://archive.maltatoday.com.mt/2009/12/23/t4.html
“While no member from the PN executive was forthcoming in giving details about the ‘deleted’ item for the approval of the three candidates, sources explained that the decision was taken a few days after a serious row at the PN’s Zurrieq club, during a social event organised on the occasion of the feast of St Catherine back in the first week of September.
MaltaToday is informed that Hermann Schiavone and Anthony Bezzina were “politely” asked to leave the premises, after Franco Debono insisted with the local PN committee that the “unapproved candidates” should not be present for the activity.
Manwel Mallia was not present on that day.” Manuel mallia should read Manuel Delia I think.
Very Machiavellian to say the least.
‘Ave Franco, il-belt li hraqt issellimlek’
BTW mhux hmar (John Schembri ) wiehed hawn haw Malta.
One should not even consider Franco & Co being allowed to stand for elections under the PN ticket.
If these three could be replaced by others who are of the same level of Austin Gatt than Gonzi should not think twice in calling for early elections.
I feel that the Nationalists will come out in full force to make sure that they will be back in government but this time round without TRAITORS like the three musketeers.
Well said.