Noel Grima on Franco Debono
In The Malta Independent on Sunday, last Sunday:
For Friday last week saw the announcement of an unplanned (and forced) Cabinet reshuffle that threw down the gauntlet to Dr Debono by not naming him as marked for promotion. To which, predictably, the man replied in the wildest possible way – by declaring he had lost confidence in his leader.
Possibly this reaction was predictable, just possibly too it was what the reshuffle aimed at. Wearing an ego many sizes too big for him, with an extremely short temper, seeing his ambition thwarted, he flipped the way he would, possibly the way he was meant to.
Let’s get something clear in all this miasma of rhetoric and fervour born out of panic – Franco Debono made a huge mistake, or was made to. He turned his protest into something personal, because his patent ambition was thwarted and he thought he was owed a leg up.
That’s poppycock. The fact that he is a lawyer does not qualify him to be the next Minister for Justice, just as being a doctor does not qualify one to be Minister for Health. On the contrary, a lawyer working in the Criminal Court would possibly be tied up in so many conflicts of interest were he to be made minister for justice because of his lawyer-client links. He would not be the first one, however.
To qualify to be appointed minister, one must show competence at managing departments and ministries and Dr Debono, like many others on the backbench, has not been tried and tested at that.
But an even more important qualification is loyalty. A minister exists at the prime minister’s nod. If there is anything positive about this present Cabinet it is not just that it is small but it is also tightly knit. There are no Blair-Brown fall-outs in it.
If Franco Debono was hoping to be promoted, he should have worked on his management competence (and being a ‘sole trader’ as a lawyer does not really prepare him for that). And he should have worked on his loyalty.
On the other hand, if he wanted to raise the flag of rebellion, he went about it the wrong way. For if he, like many, was angry about Arriva and angry about Austin Gatt and angry about the €500 a week and wanted to force Gonzi out, he should have contacted his fellow rebels and made a stand inside the party structures.