Jaghzel il-kandidati hu? Kif kien se jaghmel, igellidhom?

I followed most of last Friday’s Xarabank and concluded that Beppe Fenech Adami is one of the few remaining consistent and upright MPs.

It was interesting to see Anglu Farrugia telling us viewers that a member of parliament’s honorarium is a mere €1000 a month, while others like Luciano Busuttil said that they don’t have any benefits like telephones and flights.

Jean Pierre Farrugia tried to be smart by saying that the French president cut his own salary but then didn’t tell us that this salary runs to six digits. And Farrugia seems to think that a Maltese cabinet minister should not be paid €65,000 a year for all that responsibility.

Do we expect to entice the best brains to leave their careers in the private sector so to run our country, when we pay them a pittance?

That show was one way of telling viewers, ‘Look what you get when you pay peanuts.’

Franco Debono invariably told us about his “Hames Misteri tat-Tbatija” and I just could not take any more and turned off the TV.

Wake me up when it’s all over.

On this specific matter of the media and blogs, did he, or did he not, enter into any agreement with Joseph Muscat or anyone in his party so that Joseph gives Franco the head of Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, while Franco gives Joseph and his party the head of anyone in the media or on the blogs?

The media and the blogs have a right and a duty to ask questions.

Well, he does seem to have a way of attracting attention.

What I don’t understand is how Franco Debono was a top student.

[Daphne – He was a ‘learning by rote’ top student. That sort fails miserably when it comes to anything that requires real intelligence.]

Franco’s idea of democracy is to create a suprematic parliament which would be watchdog, exclusive space and a place where privilege leads to whoever is member to forget the electoral mandate.

The same applies to party financing; over regulation leading to abuse instead of transparency with an untested capping system, as do his proposals for a justice system designed for its operators, lawyers, which would result unworkable and wasteful of resources. The resources being the extended time spent and subsequent negative effect on foreign direct investment.

Debono thinks written law compensates for cultural traits, in reality it perpetuates the myth of the ‘onorevoli’ alienating everyone else. Where lust for power, if within legal parameters, is justified. Politics as high art, just for its own sake.

His idea of how the press and the internet should be domesticated, is just the symptom. He thinks democracy and its exercise should have an own official channel, problem is, that medium is a one way system, outdated. It will only create a collusive system where parties would exclude anyone else.

He needs to catch up, an overdose of career politicians on TV has led to blogging as an alternative.

You are just so correct, Mr. Calleja – the ´abuse´ of this parliamentary privilege should indeed be rectified – only then can MPs be held responsible for what they say.