Franco Debono wants political satire, as long as it’s not about him

This is my column in The Malta Independent today.

Isn’t Franco Debono ever so slightly peculiar? While going on about how much he welcomes the idea of political satire during carnival (missing the point completely that satire demands something that the makers of Maltese carnival floats don’t generally have) he lashed out at those who criticised him in print and speech or by circulating a petition for his resignation.

He was especially miffed at all the jokes about his Form IIC midyear report.

Debono even expected not to be satirised or laughed at when he walked into parliament, for an important vote, carrying under his arm the 1990s equivalent of the 1970s clichés Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Political satire and criticism are highly desirable to Franco Debono, except where they concern him. Then they are grounds for hysterical behaviour which would see women accused of being hormonal, menopausal or at ‘that time of the month’.

He doesn’t seem to understand that he is a satirist’s dream, and that the only reason he is taken seriously is out of sheer necessity by one set of politicians and out of sheer salivating desire for power by the other set.

The press takes him seriously because this small society is riddled with eccentric behaviour and the guiding principle is that we must all rub along together as best we can – lame ducks, crazies and unethical and unprincipled magistrates included.

Debono thinks he is the solution, when it is quite obvious to most that he is the problem and worse still, symptomatic of a much deeper and wider malaise: not so much the inability to see situations for what they are, as fear of calling things by their proper name.

If those who make Maltese carnival floats had any sort of satirical imagination or any wish to make a satirical statement without fearing the consequences that are largely in their own mind, King Carnival would this year have been Franco Debono (obviously), with Jeffrey as his jester, both of them riding on a massive Form IIC midyear report – with a flat tyre, of course – while an effigy of Jesmond Mugliett cranks up his relations to write anti-bus letters to ‘Ta’ Times’.

This would have been followed immediately by a Sargas float, with John Dalli and Joseph Muscat using a little Libyan backscratcher on each other, towed by a Jolly Roger float captained by Bastjan ‘I Heard Voices in Prison’ Dalli, sinking under the weight of a cargo of green soap.

I shall keep my ideas for what should have been the inevitable Consuelo-Robert-and-Joseph float to myself, though you can imagine what fun that would have been. There was a great deal of scope, too, for an Astrid Vella-riding-on-Renzo-Piano float, complete with megaphone, bright red hair and martyred virgin outfit, in hot pursuit of Bahrija crabs.

And what a shame they let the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (at least Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance got cropped to ZAMM back in the days of big hair, flares and far-out-man) go by without a float.

But for the next few years at least, it’s going to be more of the twirling ballerinas in neon glow paint. So let’s not get too excited about the political satire.

Franco Debono said that we all took the existence of the ban for granted, and never bothered to check, because we are too submissive. So why didn’t he bother to check – because he’s submissive too?

The reality is that nobody could give a damn, really, because makers of carnival floats are not exactly gagging to work on political satire, while those who deal in political satire or consume it are not lining the streets of Valletta and Floriana every year to watch those carnival floats go by.

They are elsewhere, far from the antithesis of wit, mockery and insight that is the Valletta carnival. And no, I don’t mean the one in parliament.