Franco is just lovin’ it
This is my column in The Malta Independent, yesterday.
So once more it is everybody else’s fault and everybody else’s problem but Franco Debono’s – even though he is the one who, as he tells us repeatedly, is suffering so very deeply.
Late Wednesday afternoon, he told the press that he will not say what he would do if Joseph Muscat calls for a vote of (no) confidence in the government.
So far, he has said that he will not support the government, which is not the same thing as saying that he will vote against, though it has been interpreted as such even by the Labour Party.
He has hedged about and huffed and puffed when asked direct questions about the subject over the last few days, and Joseph Muscat has accordingly drawn in his own horns and communicated his reluctance to call for a vote of (no) confidence in the government.
Even he now thinks that Debono will pull the ultimate fast one on him and abstain, causing the vote to go through on the strength of the Speaker’s.
Debono will get a major trip out of that, as he has done already. Even if knows that when you ‘increase the dose’ – as he puts it – to the point where it is fatal to your victim, you are deprived of your victim and hence, of all further opportunities for increasing the dose still further, and you’ve lost the game.
Debono now holds the balance of power between the two parties and he’s loving it, to steal a phrase from a hamburger chain.
What he loves most of all is keeping them both guessing, on tenterhooks and increasingly flustered and unable to take proper decisions.
Both parties are saying ‘Will he, won’t he’ and it amuses him greatly. He’s quite obviously getting a huge kick out of it and more fool both parties for letting him get it.
Having the prime minister press on with business as usual and take a planned trip to Tunisia and Qatar was a master-stroke. It communicates the right message to the public – ‘let’s get on with it’ – while letting Franco Debono know that everybody is not holed up in a bunker concentrating only on him.
This might be devastating to his ego, and it might cause him to spend even more nights wired and awake, devising tactics to ‘increase the dose’, but there you go.
Here’s what I think he’s working up to with his games of brinkmanship and revenge. He’s going to try to get as much as he can from the Nationalist Party by letting them think he’s going to vote against the government. This is the strategy he has deployed so far and he has described it on television as ‘inzid id-doza’ (idiomatically, upping the ante).
Meanwhile, by suggesting that he will vote against the government, he has put Joseph’s and Michelle’s saliva glands into overdrive at the thought that they will get to be John and Jackie Kennedy a year sooner than expected and with a landslide victory.
When the stage is set, and Muscat cannot contain his excitement any longer at the thought of being handed the premiership by, of all people, his classroom nemesis, Debono will pull back, abstain, and leave Joseph Muscat high and dry with his excitement.
Men have a word for women who behave like this, and it’s not cock-fighter.
Then Franco Debono will laugh himself sick, and I probably will do so too, if only because it’s a whole lot better than weeping with despair at the thought of having so many very odd men in parliament.
On Wednesday, Debono joined in the Labour Party’s tune that it is the prime minister who has caused all this, that it is Lawrence Gonzi and his stubbornness that are to blame. Gonzi is to blame because he won’t obey his backbencher and resign.
His spectacular nerve is quite impressive, for all the wrong reasons, but I think where Debono is concerned, we have all given up trying to find rhyme or reason in his behaviour. He probably thinks that he is doing to Gonzi what Mintoff did to Paul Boffa, but it’s a sad miscalculation.
It doesn’t help, either, that he keeps talking about how “disgruntled Nationalists have no voice in the party”. Who are these disgruntled Nationalists who have no voice in the party?
My experience of people who vote is that they do just that – vote once every five years and follow proceedings off the news and internet discussions. They don’t want or need to get involved in the actual political party hierarchy or administration, or make their voice heard within the party machine.
They don’t want to have lunch with the secretary-general, a direct line to the party leader, or coffee with the party president. They don’t want to walk freely in and out of ‘stamperija’ to feel important and listened to. They have their own friends, interests and work.
So whoever Debono is talking about or talking to, it is certainly not electors but the sort of people who want to run the machine. You know, like him.
Except that he doesn’t want to run the party machine but the government machine. By now, we should have worked out how he thinks: if Franco Debono doesn’t personally like something, then it must be changed.
He didn’t like the law course (except in the first year when they read subjects he enjoyed, he told us), so he said to The Malta Independent that the law course should be structured differently. You know, because he didn’t enjoy it and found parts of it difficult and incomprehensible, causing him to miss many lectures.
But the war on Lawrence Gonzi goes on.
“Party leaders come and go, and the internal organs of the party should be very careful not to prejudice the future of the party,” Debono said to that newspaper. This self-delusion is breath-taking. Translated, he means that he has issued a threat with concomitant demands, and if those demands are not met, then he will deliver on his threat and the consequences will be Lawrence Gonzi’s fault, the Nationalist Party’s fault, the government’s fault, for not acceding to his demands.
Unfortunately, in his current transport of passion, Debono does not realise that he has begun to contradict himself rather too often. His present claim is that he resigned from the Nationalist Party “months ago”.
How, then, is he upset because he was not involved in the cabinet reshuffle or because that cabinet reshuffle was not made to his liking? Did he honestly expect the prime minister to choose his cabinet from among those who had resigned from the party, even if they were of sound mind and strong experience and ability?
Sadly, tragically, he has brought it all back to political party financing. It is not that we don’t need legislation on political party financing, though that is now an irrelevance in the present scenario.
It is that once more, this is all about him.
Few people appear to know that his law thesis was about – yes, political party financing. It wasn’t a particularly good thesis, and it was written many years ago, but that doesn’t matter because the fact that he wrote a thesis on the subject has made the subject his. It must be given immediate attention and nobody else is allowed to touch it.
Truly, Malta has a problem on its hands, and its name is certainly not Lawrence Gonzi.
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What a well written piece, Daphne. You can read Franco Debono like a book.
It’s Friday the 13th and Dear Joseph has announced today that he is presenting in parliament a vote of no confidence in the Government …. bloody BAD LUCK!
The motion has now been presented.
Joseph has pulled his cock out of the bag. He’s ready for his cock-fight with Baggio.
No Ciccio, Joseph and Franco ARE the cocks.
The PM has cancelled his trips abroad ..
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120113/local/pm-gives-assurance-that-opposition-s-motion-will-be-debated.402179
wishful thinking and flawed logic by purcinella. It has gone too far now – the only way out is for Gonzi to resign which he won’t. Your dear leader has now withdrawn his vacation to Tunisia – lofl
No it isn’t, we have established procedures in the house to take care of that, giving instruments to the opposition if and when it deems fit.
Tell me Gordon, is your wishful thinking and flawed logic a concrete plan?
Damed if you do, damed if you don’t.
You are a stupid lot now aren’t you.
It’s “damned” not “damed” so don’t go about calling people “stupid”.
Peppi, I think he meant ‘damed’ because Joseph and Franco have turned parliament into a pantomime.
Wait for Jason Micallef to get elected; we’ll really have the dames then.
L-aqwa li Daphne purcinella! [sic]
Ara taqax xi waqa ghal sormok bhal ma gralek fl-2008.
@Gordon
“Your dear leader has now withdrawn his vacation to Tunisia – lofl”
Tghid kien sejjer fuq xi package oll-inkluwsiv ta’ Orange Travel, bil-kortezija ta’ Karmenu Vella?
It has gone too far for you, Franco. You’re now organising the election of your classroom nemesis.
Good morning, prime minister Joseph Muscat. Good bye Franco Debono the would-like-to-have been.
Franco, remember the famous maxim that a person should lead, follow or get out of the way.
So, since you will certainly never be trusted to lead by either party, you find it extremely difficult to follow as you know it all, and are better than everyone else, then there’s only one option left.
Gordon (not Pisani – he attends cabinet meetings and Franco Debono doesn’t) – Franco Debono’s going to elect Joseph Muscat as Prime Minister.
Now watch the feathers fly. This is going to be the cockfight from hell.
Sorry for the mistype.
Calling people “stupid” was not a “typo”. Also, a typo never occurs in that sort of proximity without being noticed.
Just treat others with a little respect and it will be returned in abundance.
Have a nice day sir/madam. I wish you well.
I do beg your pardon for hurting your language capabilities but I do make mistakes, sometimes even twice running. It doesn’t bother me and it shouldn’t bother you. As for your counsel, stuff it, if ever I’m so hard pressed to need it I’ll call you, don’t call me. Good day sir.
http://www.malta-surveys.com/election-poll-01-12.html
Sunshine, your poll is flawed, because “I’ve voted already, just want to see the result.” is not a choice. It should simply be a button that makes the results visible.
I think the pulcinelli are those who at this moment of crisis are wishing for a general election instead of compromise. Let’s hope the best for our country.
My gut feeling tells me that Franco Debono will embarrass Joseph Muscat this time as he will abstain on MLP’s motion.
Now that is what I call a roaster.
The Qatar and Tunisia trips were not intended to make PN look business-as-usual in the face of the political crisis. It’s a ploy intended to make PN look like the victim, though I do not know who it was intended to convince, except the mindless diehard drones.
I don’t think that anyone needs to be on tenterhooks; just assume Dr Debono will do what you least want him to do and wait for him to do it.
In Maltese we have a saying, “Ahseb il-hazin biex it-tajjeb ma jonqosx” which, at a stretch, can be applied to this situation.
I still think he intends to abstain on the budget-implementation bill (by not attending) and intends it to pass with the casting vote, this being a passable face-saver for all concerned.
Gonzi wins because the bill is approved, Debono wins because he has abstained, and Muscat wins because PN only survived with the casting vote.
Given what Dr Muscat is reported to have said this morning, I think he might be of similar mind and his call for a vote of no confidence will be in the ‘hope’ (rather than ‘knowledge’) that Dr Debono will vote with the opposition.
I also suspect the opposition does not relish the thought that Dr Gonzi might return from Tunisia and Qatar with a fistful of investments that might influence the electorate’s wavering support at the polls.
The stability issue is being milked dry by our media when there is no urgency, such as existed in the case of the recent Greek coup by the EU, where it was urgent that Papandreou be held back from holding a referendum, having had enough of the EU’s top brass dictating his every move with a cat-and-mouse, carrot-dangling strategy.
If an incoming administration fails to maintain the apparent momentum of employment, investment and infrastructure that Dr Gonzi’s administration is progressing for maturity at the programmed-end of the legislature, the euphoria for “change for the sake of change” will be short lived and disillusionment and divisiveness will prevail with a vengeance. In such circumstances, Malta would be in for a very rough ride.
The ultimate voters’ dilemma will be whether to hang on to the “bird in the hand” rather than go after the “bird in the bush”. The telling opinions will continue to fluctuate until the final moment and I suspect they might marginally opt to err on the side of caution. The country is significantly confused but luckily, it is less prone to being led by the nose and will intelligently decide which way suits it best.
As has often been quoted, the electorate will have the government it deserves.
Franco Debono is sending many mixed and/or ambiguous messages. I’m not sure whether this is by design or simply because he’s improvising (badly) as he goes along.
Franco’s life motto seems to be “If Joseph can do it, I can do better.”
It seems Franco Debono must have had several issues in Form IIC. Joseph Muscat’s undergraduate dissertation was also about party financing.
A quick search through the UoM’s Library OPAC returned this:
https://www.um.edu.mt/library/opac/F/48G7FUIVL1HTV3QBFA4IVRKU4QATLLA3SUGDN5JJSQUEIY7FEV-11395?func=full-set-set&set_number=036000&set_entry=000044&format=999
Joseph Muscat’s dissertation was submitted in 1996. Perhaps Franco Debono would not be outdone by his former classmate. Lo and behold, just three years later, he churned out his own take on party financing:
https://www.um.edu.mt/library/opac/F/48G7FUIVL1HTV3QBFA4IVRKU4QATLLA3SUGDN5JJSQUEIY7FEV-15237?func=full-set-set&set_number=036060&set_entry=000001&format=999
Erm, this is becoming weird.
Is there a girl somewhere they both wanted to date?
[Daphne – Is that a serious question? One of them strikes me as being more interested in men than girls, and the other strikes me as fundamentally asexual.]
What I can’t understand is why anyone would choose to keep up a secondary school rivalry well into adulthood. It’s just not healthy.
Perhaps this dissertation episode is just an unfortunate coincidence – I simply cannot imagine why anyone in his right mind would actually look up what his former nemesis wrote about and attempt to out do him.
However, nothing Franco Debono does surprises me any more.
Franco Debono hasn’t grown up. That’s why. He’s still stuck in the classroom.
I can’t get myself to where that could lead.
Well, I have to say that it is not just Franco Debono who is having the time of his life playing up the two party state.
Many floating voters are disgusted by the behavior of the two parties, one desperately clinging to power and the other one falling over in a rush to get into power.
When the election comes, the floating vote will deal its hand and maybe just maybe we will have a third force to control these power hungry stooges.
Don’t worry, the third force is not that little pressure group lead by what’s his name, Brigulio?, well something like that.
[Daphne – No, it’s the far right, isn’t it, which is far more popular than AD.]
Franco may be “lovin it ” but Joseph is lovin’ it even more.
Franco fell for the bait of that poster of a few months ago – hook, line and sinker.
One of the things which keeps bothering me about all this is what are Franco Debono’s real objectives.
Why is he doing this? It will do no good to his political or professional careers and Joseph Muscat will end up taking the spoils. So what does he get?
[Daphne – Please stop trying to measure him by the yardstick you would use for a normal person. In his mind, he is doing this to exert pressure (izid id-doza) to be made a minister and given his due recognition. He can’t see that he has now made that objective impossible, even if it were possible before (if he had the required experience and soundness of mind, that is).]
So you are relying your opinion on one simple assumption, Daphne, jekk qed nifhem sew. the assumption that Franco hasn’t yet recognised the fact that his days in parliament are outnumbered, let’s not mention being a minister. Well give it another second of thought.
So you think this is an act of brinkmanship and he is waiting until the last moment for Gonzi to step aside?
You pointed out that since Debono had resigned a few weeks ago it was obvious that the PM would not choose someone who has resigned. I would like to take this point further. When parliament starts to meet again will Debono sit on the side of Government or the opposition? How does it work?
[Daphne – On the government side. Crossing the floor is a statement. It means he has joined the Opposition.]
So very well said, Daphne.
He thinks he has the attention of the nation but it’s all on the wrong side and he has lost the plot.