Cock-a-doodle-do
I'd like to let everyone know that our libel laws are not restrictive enough because people are laughing at me and I can't do anything about it.
You know what really gets to me with Franco’s boasting about all he has done to ensure that we in Malta can consult a lawyer before police interrogation (we aren’t allowed one during interrogation)?
He makes it seem altruistic, that he’s doing it ‘for democracy’. And the sort of people in this society who take things at face value pick up his refrain:
Franco is being democratic.
There is no doubt that the situation in which we in Malta are not allowed a lawyer during interrogation (it is still like that)is appalling and a violation of our rights.
But we forget that Franco is a criminal lawyer, that his clients include or have included people like L-Imriehu, the imprisoned cocaicne dealer who paid the bribe that brought down the then chief justice and an appeals court judge, though he wasn’t his lawyer at the time.
He may think or say that he is ‘doing it for democracy’, but in reality he is doing it for his clients, and he has used this same argument to have interrogation statement after interrogation statement declared null by the court.
I am not criticising his actions in doing this per se, because a criminal lawyer takes the brief from his clients and not from the state or society, and rights are rights and there should be no arguing with them. But context is all and I have had enough of hearing Franco claim that his efforts were altruistic.
Indeed they are not. Can anyone have failed to notice that he takes an interest in something – like a terrier hanging onto a priest’s cassock – only when it is of direct relevance to him?
He is a criminal lawyer so he took up the battle to ensure that people like his clients get a lawyer during interrogation (and they only got one before interrogation).
He wrote a law thesis on political party financing, so he owns the subject and nobody else is allowed to touch it.
He wants to become justice minister so he blackmailed the prime minister into splitting the justice and interior portfolios (an admirable objective, but not when the motivation is self-interest) so that there would be a piece of cake for him.
He didn’t like the way he was handled on a couple of television shows, so suddenly broadcasting in Malta is a major scandal and that is his current campaign.
And now he’s onto the libel laws, because we’re laughing at him and he’s not allowed to do anything about it because this isn’t China or Gaddafi’s Libya.
If he falls down and breaks his leg, you can be sure that his next campaign will be the amount of time you have to wait to get it put in plaster, because Franco’s leg is more important than all the other legs in the waiting-room.
I’m beginning to think that the only reason he hasn’t yet proposed is because the marriage law isn’t to his particular liking and he’s trying to work out how to get it tailored to his bespoke instructions.
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So am I reading it correctly that he is now saying that if E Galea Curmi goes, he is fine?
[Daphne – Any other fresh, new demands on a daily basis? Shutting down this blog, for instance? But he can’t ask for that, can he, because it would put him on a par with Labour’s ideas about democracy and free speech.]
Could that be Engerer’s brief?
OMG?
This is similar to JPO’s fight for divorce. He also did that for the country except that he needed it himself!
And I still say it was for his own political rather than personal expedient; it made me refuse to want to play his game at the time.
Elections are not won by the hardliners.
well done xmun! (s/he pointed this out in the post before this one)
He says thank you. I’d better make a copy of your praise. Who knows. I might need it in the future to make my claim for a ministerial job and show it off to the PBS cameras.
Don’t thank me. Thank Daphne for allowing us space to make our comments on her blog.
The continuous boasting of what an achiever he is has become as irritating as the number of singers we have on these islands.
We are facing the following scenarios.
1. Franco Debono keeps away from Parliament or abstains during the vote of no confidence, and the government survives the episode on the strength of the Speaker’s vote.
2. Franco Debono votes in favour of the Labour motion, the government collapses and the country heads for an early election.
3. The Prime Minister resigns the party leadership (this is what Debono and friends are after), and a new leader backed by Franco and friends will be chosen. But what if they don’t like the new leader either?
4. Debono and the Prime Minister make peace (this option is highly improbable).
As I see it, much will depend on how strong Lawrence Gonzi is within the party structure, how strong the coalition opposing the leader is, and whether the Nationalist Party is ready to face what looks like the inevitable electoral hammering.
I am convinced that this has become a power struggle for the leadership of the Nationalist Party.
That is why Franco Debono wants the Prime Minister to take responsibility for ‘mistakes’. If the Prime Minister does this he would do a ‘Seppuku’.
There is a set of scenarios being put togather by the Gonzi team, on how do they survive politically post elections. Going to an early election due to FD’s antics, may give them a lifeline to cling on even if the polls favour the PL.
Daphne, I do believe that reconciliation with Franco is still a viable option and that attacking his ego will continue to make this impossible. Whatever he’s done and however the outcome, I still think that there is still room for dialogue and that Franco does not really want to bring down the Government.
I agree completely. It’s what I have been saying all the time.
Daphne is not the PN. She can “attack”/explain his ego.
I’m not telling Daphne what to do, just a suggestion as proud men sometimes are prepared to die rather than sacrifice humiliation.
@ Lorna Saliba
Radical actions calls for radical solutions.
‘Compromise’ = Band Aid solution.
‘Radical surgery’ = expelling Franco from the NP once and for all.
Anything else is just a time borrowing tactic.
If the NP had to lose the 2013 election, it would have been par for the course and the next try would have been in 2018. If the NP loses now, next try would be 2017 in time for the EU presidency.
Joseph must have forgotten about this minor detail.
Reconciliation, for me and I hope for Dr. Gonzi, is out of the question.
If Dr. Debono is to change tack and either abstain or vote against the motion, then it will be his own conscious decision at this stage.
I believe the PM has done more than enough to accommodate the jumped-up, egotistical prat.
I’d rather have an utterly useless Labour government in a couple of months’ time, with Dr. Debono self-dispatched into limbo, than see Dr. Gonzi pander and kow-tow to this idiot any longer.
Sorry Lorna, you do not make deals with blackmailers. You only do that once and you are screwed forever and a day.
Franco Debono is obsessed with himself and is a me, me, me person.
He is probably one of the most boring people around and in the fullness of time we would like to get to see copies of the SMSes he sent to the Prime Minister.
Trying to mollify by Debono by pandering to his ego is what created this problem in the first place. What all those running circles round him don’t realise is that they’ve been drawn into the vortex of his narcissism and are helping to shore up his incredible and undeserved self-belief.
All those well-intentioned government attempts at making Debono feel important – praising him publicly, mentioning him to the media whenever possible, giving him perks like a post in the OPM, including him in the delegation to the UN in New York – have actually made him worse and have precipitated the very situation they were meant to avoid.
The man is insufferable. As any woman who has had to deal with a persistent and unwelcome suitor knows, the best way to deal with someone like that is to pull the shutters down and leave him out in the cold.
It could become sticky with Labour using him as an alibi.
Convenient when the programme is an impossible achievement.
@La Redoute,
Franco is not just “insufferable.” He is insatiable.
How so? He can’t do any more harm than he’s already done. The quicker everyone is shot of him, the better.
Where did the great Franco stand during the great divorce issue? Did he make any statements?
[Daphne – He was completely against divorce and voted No in the referendum, but then voted Yes in parliament. Now I’m beginning to think that it wasn’t to be democratic but to go against the prime minister.]
“He wrote a law thesis on political party financing, so he owns the subject and nobody else is allowed to touch it.”
Why is it so?
[Daphne – Better ask him. He goes mad at the merest suggestion that somebody else might report on political party financing.]
Joseph Muscat wrote a thesis on state finance for political parties – three years before Debono did.
Was the party financing thesis the same one judged below par and which nearly cost him his LL.D graduation?
And was Ugo Mifsud Bonnici on the thesis adjucating panel which explains why there is no love lost between Franco and Carmelo Misfsud Bonnico (Ugo’s son)?
Franco has so many chips on his shoulder(s) that he could keep the nearest greasy spoon take-away supplied for days.
Yes and yes. The aggravating factor is that Carm Mifsud Bonnici’s finally wrote the official report. Franco – having mistakenly believed that he was commissioned to write the report, when he was asked to prepare the groundwork so as to make him feel important – threw a wobbly.
I can’t help wondering how all these big ego small men would have coped had they been born women.
“I’m beginning to think that the only reason he hasn’t yet proposed is because the marriage law isn’t to his particular liking …”
He might also be looking for a way of proposing that will become his own.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqNF6MQR7SU
Edwin Vassallo was John Dalli’s main canvasser in the PN’s leadership race eight years ago. The most important thing he said yesterday was that, following the leadership race, he remained loyal to the party leader.
When Debono speaks of HIS loyalty to the party (for example by referring to being a PN candidate for 10 years), what he is really talking about is loyalty to his own narrow self-interest.
It is because Franco Debono does not understanding the mean of loyalty that we are in this mess.
One thing is certain. The right to have your lawyer present during interrogation is not a right that can be availed of everywhere except Malta, as Il-Frank portrays it to be. Rather the opposite in fact.
It’s not even a right for a majority of European citizens.
The governments of Germany, France, Belgium and other countries are vehemently opposed to its introduction and last year blocked Commissioner Reading from pushing forward a directive which was proposing its Europe-wide introduction.
Furthermore, the Supreme Court of Canada, last year started putting restrictions on the right, particularly in the case of serious crimes.
I think that Il-Frank believes that if he seen something he likes in a Hollywood movie or CSI, then that something must be right and he likes it. And if he likes it, everyone likes it and it must become law.
I have my doubts about whether a person suspected of committing a crime should have the right to be assisted by a lawyer during questioning by the police. However the European Court of Human Rights has ruled in favour of this right. http://livingtheeuropeandream.blogspot.com/2011/07/right-to-lawyer-during-police.html
Because you mention Germany:
In Germany, suspects have the right to consult a lawyer at all times, before and during the interrogation: § 136 I 2 StPO (Strafprozessordnung = Code of Criminal Procedure). Of course they can also always opt not to answer any questions at all. In fact, when the police invite you to being questioned as a suspect, you don’t even need to show up. Only the prosecutor’s office or a judge can summon a suspect.