Ranier Fsadni on Franco Debono (1)
In The Times, today:
But the fact that (Franco Debono) has insisted on the word “evil”, which not even the opposition has ever used, means he is giving it the quasi-diabolical weight it has in ordinary discourse. Should he not be asked to explain why he is insisting on this word, not others?
Not to do so means that his use of “evil” is being dismissed as over-the-top. If it is, then that is in itself a judgement that should be explicated because it would be a verdict about whether Dr Debono is capable of basic ethical judgements, which are at the heart of his case. A related instance is his grave charge that there is a clique around the Prime Minister that may be blackmailing him.
Lou Bondì tried to get Dr Debono to expand on the charge, only to be told that he should investigate it himself.
By what standard of any other liberal democracy would Dr Debono be able to make this charge without the mainstream media pronouncing its assessment of a claim that, effectively, means there’s been a secret coup?
Surely, the mainstream media have been observing the life of this government enough to be able to form a judgement? If they draw a blank, then taking Dr Debono seriously means demanding that he hand over evidence.
3 Comments Comment
“By what standard of any other liberal democracy would Dr Debono be able to make this charge without the mainstream media pronouncing its assessment of a claim that, effectively, means there’s been a secret coup?”
Well, by the same standard used when such an eniment intellectual as Prof. Peter Serracino Inglott declares that “the implementation of the National Minimum Curriculum was the biggest ever disaster in the field”, last December, yet no journalist picks this up and investigates, apart from reporting Serracino Inglott verbatim. Read about it here http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20111218/local/Fr-Peter-launches-scathing-attack-on-education-policy.398787
Dear Mr Fsadni, our journalism is a very very Maltese form of journalism, made to measure for our little cosy, family and friends island.
…or in which liberal democracy would a case such as the Bickle case come up, which is proof of a parallel structure of power inside Malta’s one and only prison, yet no journalists investigate?
In a liberal democracy, the minister of the interior would be literally hounded out of his office by indignated citizens who would have read hundreds of pages of reports and background information about the case? Here the Minister just smiles at the camera, and tells us that things are not really that bad. Dear Mr Fsadni, this is Malta for you. Surely you know this?
[Daphne – And perhaps you don’t know, Albert, that Franco Debono – you know, the very man demanding to be made minister of justice – was Josette Bickle’s defence lawyer when she was originally jailed. Perhaps the only reason he’s since discovered a passionate horror for ‘drugs in prison’ is that she has changed her lawyer.]
“A related instance is his grave charge that there is a clique around the Prime Minister that may be blackmailing him.”
That is one thing Debono is right about.
What he doesn’t tell us though is that the name of the single member of that blackmailing clique is ‘Franco Debono’.
I was expecting Lou Bondi to say something to that effect when Debono mentioned the clique to him, and I was a bit disappointed that he didn’t.