I’m going to have to say it again: I told you so (but I don’t have any school reports left, sorry)

Published: January 7, 2012 at 1:22pm

Franco Debono is currently giving a press conference.

No, he is not dressed as Julius Caesar and the press conference isn’t being held on some roundabout, presumably on the understanding that one roundabout with a big prick on it is quite enough.

I’m not at the press conference (damn) but I’m told by somebody who is that he has just asked for the removal of Lawrence Gonzi as party leader.

Franco’s disorder, which we know now to be rooted in that Form IIC mid-year report and whatever role it might have played in his pathological rivalry with classmate Joseph Muscat, is now full-blown.

If Joseph Muscat is party leader, then he has got to be party leader too.




17 Comments Comment

  1. Cportelli says:

    I’ ve got better marks than Franco, so I’m going to beat him in the race to the PN leadership.

  2. Spiru says:

    So Franco Debono and Joseph Muscat were in the same class – probably the two class nerds vying with each other to see whoever gets the higher marks and throwing tantrums when the other surpasses him.

    Both are still, in their own way, hanging on to their mummy’s apron strings (jew sabu s-sodda mifruxa). Both show petulance and pettiness galore (Daphne, you were right when you compared Muscat to that girl in the Just William books – now we have one on each side).

    [Daphne – Violet Elizabeth Bott.]

    Both show bullying tactics galore (Daphne, you analysed the Muscat/Cuschieri seat issue so well). And yet – one is the leader of a political party, the other a petty backbencher on a (hopefully) quick way out of Maltese politics on the other side.

    Speaks volumes about the parties’ standings, doesn’t it.

  3. C Falzon says:

    “If Joseph Muscat is party leader, then he has got to be party leader too.”

    He is in such a poor state of mind that he doesn’t even realise that he is instead helping his nemesis become Prime Minister while getting himself locked out in the cold.

  4. Rover says:

    How right you are Daphne.
    ,
    What really irks me is why my country is littered with little Mintoffs, all of them disruptive arseholes who think they are God’s gift to mankind.

    This little prat won’t cut it as a rubbish collector where I come from.

  5. Jozef says:

    HE was ‘tajjeb fl-iskola’, and went one better than Joseph by producing his school report.

    Is there an MP’s charity football match this year?

  6. Enid Blyton says:

    I give Franco Debono 10 days to resign, mark my words.

    • A Grech says:

      If he does, it would mean he acknowledges the fact he made a fool of himself.

      I suspect he might cross on to the Labour Party and it will be foolish for Joseph Muscat to accept him.

      I’m a Labour supporter and would not mind seeing this government pack it up but Franco’s behavior seems to be more of a kindergarten kid acting up.

      At this stage, I think he’s lost and speaks to defend himself and the more he speaks the worse he’s looking.

      • Joseph A Borg says:

        I’m right with you. I’m tasting bitter lemons all this morning. I didn’t know politics could make me woozy but yesterday evening I had to sit down and stay put.

  7. Sarah says:

    Shouldn’t people like him be tested psychiatrically if they are jeopardizing the stability of a country at such a difficult time?

  8. Pat Zahra says:

    Is Franco Debono an only child?

    [Daphne – No. He has a brother.]

    • BC says:

      Hahaa…..I am already imaging your ‘blogging room’, some 10ft by 10ft room, with portfolios and family trees and a laptop in the middle…..just for curiosity Daphne, what is your maiden surname? maybe one day I’ll have the time to draw up your own family tree.

      [Daphne – I don’t have a blogging room, BC. Portfolios of what? And the only trees around here have leaves on them, though some of them don’t right now. My surname is Vella, but it’s a very particular family and you wouldn’t know about it, so don’t even bother trying.]

  9. Peppi iehor says:

    Franco Debono does not approve of oligarchy.

    He does not approve of collective decisions which he interprets as the PM being “held hostage” by those around him; (I always thought that democracy entailed debating points before an amalgam of them becomes a final consensus).

    So what is he advocating? My logic tells me that he wants a dictatorship, i.e. a dominator or dominatrix. Any volunteers?

    Someone on ToM comments-board proffered his felicitations at the fact that “he has cojones”. My own thoughts were that he should be reminding him of that old Maltese saying “Do not cut off your cojones to spite your wife”.

    I see only knee-jerk reactions from FD without so much as a pretence of having thought about what he was about to say.

    Whatever his school report says, I suspect that his game was draughts when he should have practised chess, given that his present life deals with metaphoric knights and bishops rather than flat discs.

    The pawn has to travel all the way up the board before it becomes suitably influential as a queen. At this juncture, he has only managed to become “drama queen” but I can see him being vengeful and hanging around for the dissolution of parliament so he can thump the air and claim “li ghaddiet tieghu”.

    One thing I cannot suss out is whether Joseph Muscat (Toni, Anglu. Jose, etc) will want this type of tantrum-throwing, dictatorial loose canon, even as a backbencher, given that if they win an election, it is not likely to be a runaway victory like Tony Blair’s at the expense of John Major.

    Dr Debono tacitly admitted, during his press conference, that without the party, he would not have been elected, but continued with “as the election was won with only 1500 votes”, he determines that each candidate deserves respect.

    Given this logic, how does he quantify and relate the respect owing to his 2000 first count votes and to Dr Gonzi’s 16,000? Is this a demonstration of his “respect” for his leader who overshadowed his puny inherited success at the polls?

    And what was that half-heard question that he answered by reiterating “meritocracy”? Was it his admission that only a ministerial post would have sufficed?

    A political party proposes a manifesto to the electorate and also proposes candidates it considers likely to uphold it. An elected candidate can only dissociate himself from that manifesto by vacating his seat, for whatever reason, including loss of faith in the leadership. The people vote for a programme more than for individuals.

    The party is thus the programme is thus the electorate’s will and the leadership will be judged on how close to that manifesto it manages to stay, in anticipation of the ensuing one.

    Franco Debono’s strength is not his intelligence or success when at St Aloysius, but the incidental fact that the election was won with a one seat majority and that fact alone gives strength to any renegade wannabe member to wield his sword wildly and hopefully.

    He also resorted to cheap shots about the PM not voting in favour of divorce notwithstanding the referendum result, forgetting that Dr Gonzi said he would endorse it IF it looked like the law was not going to be approved.

    Given that it was predetermined that the law was going to pass, there was no need for Dr Gonzi to divert from his expressed moral belief.

    Dr. Debono, even if you succeed in forcing your leader to go to the people, there will not even be a pyrrhic victory for you, I’m afraid. There is no more room for exhorting a modicum of commonsense or intelligence.

  10. cikku l-poplu says:

    Naghmel appell li kull min ghandu rapport bhal ta’ Franco jew ahjar johrog ghal l-elezzjoni bil-kundizzjoni li jsirr ministru jew prim ministru.

    Ghax veru trid tkun ghajjin min mohhok biex iggib crew tat-TVM id-dar tieghek u flok titkellem turijhom rapport tal-form II ta’ meta kont l-iskola.

    Dan huwa tifel rovinat minn tfulijtu u jrid jirrovina pajjiz.

  11. A Grech says:

    Just curious!!!! How come you never got involved in politics as a candidate, Daphne?

    [Daphne – What does this have to do with the price of eggs? You might as well ask me why I never studied medicine or learned how to fly a plane, or baked cakes for a living.]

    • A Grech says:

      Never read any comments from you about eggs or medicine but read many about politics and you seem to like that topic so I was wondering!

      [Daphne – I WRITE about politics. THAT’S my job. It’s A DIFFERENT JOB to actually being a politician. That’s why politicians CAN’T WRITE about politics, as we see in the newspapers every day.]

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