Not as smart as we thought they are
Franco Debono - not as smart as he thinks he is, because like Alfred Sant he's painted himself into a corner
It’s funny, isn’t it, how people’s minds sometimes work – or don’t.
You think they’re pretty intelligent, you work on that basis, and then something happens and it suddenly hits you that they can’t really be that bright because they’re unable to see the big picture or foresee the consequences of their actions, still less the implications.
When you think that somebody’s fairly smart and you act on that understanding, you can end up with a real disaster on your hands if that person reacts in a way that’s so daft and stupid that you couldn’t have predicted it because, quite simply, for years you had thought they were clever.
But there you go.
It’s usually when they’re under great pressure that you can work out how sharp people truly are. It’s not just grace under pressure that you have to be looking at. When people’s thinking-skills desert them at times of crisis, then they probably didn’t have very many to begin with.
It is true that they have to live with the stupidity of their actions for years to come, if not for the rest of their lives sometimes, but the trouble is that so do those around them.
Now let’s take Nationalist MP Franco Debono, who is threatening not to vote with the government whip on Friday against the Opposition’s motion for Austin Gatt’s resignation.
He and Labour leader Joseph Muscat were in the same class at school: at St Aloysius College, as it turns out, which has given us most of our politicians in recent decades.
To say that there was rivalry between them on the matter of who got the highest marks and the most prizes would be an understatement.
This ‘smartest boy in the class’ tag seems to have shaped their self-image. When Muscat gave his first speech as party leader to a hall full of admiring delegates, he started his oddly worded third-person autobiography by saying that “there was once a boy who was quite clever at school”.
It’s nauseating, I know, but also significant. I don’t think it entirely incidental that they are both much-cherished mothers’ pets, because boys who are cast in that role in childhood grow up to be hell for everyone else, as many a woman with divorce papers in her hands will tell you.
It was Muscat’s classroom rival Franco Debono who scored the highest marks in a host of subjects and who walked off with several prizes every year.
Muscat lagged behind because he lacks – even as we can observe today – the tenacity and single-mindedness which Debono, for better or worse, demonstrates on a regular basis. Muscat is fundamentally lazy, with a tendency to cut corners, take the easy way out, let others do the work, and rest on his laurels, such as they are.
But now, for the first time in the lifelong competition between these two, things are set to change.
I imagine that when the Opposition leader brought before parliament his motion for a cabinet minister’s resignation, he never thought for a moment that it would be the boy who persistently competed with him and beat him in class (not physically, I hasten to add for the benefit of speakers of Globish) who would help him carry it through.
He probably thought it would be the Tooth Fairy, or Jesmond Mugliett, who still hasn’t told us what he did with his STEPS scholarship money.
So when the Tooth Fairy refused to play his game – though we don’t know yet what STEPS Mugliett plans to take – and Franco Debono stepped up to the plate instead, Muscat must have been thrilled. Not only would he be able now to get what he wants with his motion, but he would have the supreme pleasure of getting it from his classroom nemesis.
Finally, after 25 years, Muscat is going to win one over Debono, and what’s more, at Debono’s expense.
That Muscat is party leader and stands to become prime minister soon, while he is what he thinks of as a mere backbencher who should be a cabinet minister, is already galling for Franco Debono. And that is why I just cannot understand why he is doing his utmost to help him become prime minister with even greater ease, while he stands to lose even his backbench status in the general election that makes that happen.
If Franco Debono persists in this course of action, his status and credibility will shrink so that Joseph Muscat’s can grow. While Muscat’s political career will, if Debono behaves badly on Friday, get right back on track after a period of serious derailment as people begin to realise how ridiculous and perfectly useless he is as leader of the Opposition let alone prime minister, Debono’s own career will lie in shreds.
Refusing to vote against an ‘enemy’ motion for the removal of one of your colleagues, when your party has a one-seat majority in the house, is an act of political hara kiri and no, like the Tooth Fairy, when he seeks to bring down his own government Debono does not represent the people who voted for him.
These two and STEPS Mugliett need to understand that the people who voted for them and put them in parliament did so because they want to see the Nationalists in government, not Labour.
When they receive accolades from all those Labour politicians and electors who are cheering them on and instigating them to do their worst, they should remember that these people voted against them and will do so again, precisely because they want to take their place.
But as I said up top, sometimes you spend years thinking people are bright and then find out to your dismay that they’re not as bright as you thought they were, though clearly, they think they are the business.
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While people like me are worrying about our livelihood (the economy), we have this spoiled brat who has always had it his own way, stamping his feet and wasting people’s precious time, so that we can declare in parliament that ‘the people are not happy’ and that Hal Ghaxaq is not well served well with a bus service like in the old days.
My kind of democracy would include giving electors the facility to blackball candidates rather than just voting for them: a black mark next to their name, for instance, to make sure that people like Franco will never make it again to Parliament.
[Daphne – Wouldn’t it be easier and more sensible if the party were simply to deselect him?]
Just an example :
Preference
Azzopardi Jason 1
Bonnici Owen 10
Brincat Joseph 8
Cauchi Gino 9
Galea Caroline 3
Debono Franco ( Minus) -1 on being transferred to this twit on the (?) th count
my vote will cancel another one which he inherited.
Mangion Carmelo 7
Mugliett Jesmond 11
Parnis Saviour 6
Sammut Joseph 5
Schiavone Hermann 2
Seychell Malcolm 4
[Daphne – The flaw I see in this reasoning is that those who vote PN will mark all the MLP candidates down, and vice versa.]
That was some morning inspiration, but it can be used in another way – for example one chooses either to vote for a set of preferences like we normally do or to blackball one candidate.
With some brainstorming it can develop into something great.
There are lecturers at the university who use the negative marking system when there is a multiple choice question paper. I find it fair.
People who are forced to go to vote will have the option to use this tool to either elect or kill one unwanted politician.
Many of us prefer to be negative. One first-count vote to candidate A will be annulled by a negative vote for the same candidate.
[Daphne – Can’t you see why it won’t work? One half of the electorate will annul the votes of the other half, and vice versa.]
Many people in Malta are not Nationalists but anti-Labour and many Labour voters are more than anything anti-Nationalists.
They will be happy when the party they oppose loses, rather than when the party which opposes the the losing party, wins.
One hears more people arguing against the person rather than people arguing in favour of an idea by a person.
Can you imagine the candidates banging on the perspex at the counting hall?
Gahan, your point on democracy is well taken. However, I have just received a:
NEWS FLASH!
¨
‘New Labour’s Policy (according to policy guru, Karmenu Vella) Will Include An Altered Democracy Policy Called ‘INEPTOCRACY’. Definition Is ‘A system of Government Where the Least Able to Lead Are Elected By the Least Able of Producing and Where the Members of Society Least Likely to Sustain Themselves or Succeed Are Rewarded With Goods and Services Paid By the Confiscated Wealth of a Diminishing Number of Producers’.
I shudder.
Malcolm Seychell? Are you serious?
Franco has removed his FB profile.
What happened to Franco Debono’s Facebook page? He’s pulled it. A real pity because this guy could have been a very promising politician. Instead he is going to be remembered as a joke: the man who gave Labour a leg-up to power. It seems he is still too much of a baby and yet not up to it. It’s sad.
I did not know this schooling background about Debono, but it really makes sense now.
Debono is only after being able to prove to all that he is in total command of the situation, and that he can always make a winning case to defend his position.
What that implies in the larger scheme of things is absolutely beyond him. Typical characteristics of the first in class.
[Daphne – Hey, easy. I take exception to that. I was first in class. Of course, I suppose the difference is that I didn’t try to be first and it meant nothing to me. I couldn’t stand school and passionately disliked most of my teachers, who reciprocated the feeling. What is the opposite of a teacher’s pet like Franco Debono? That was me.]
For football fans it is akin to having that player who because he is technically gifted, would try to dribble past all the eleven players of the opposing side for nothing else but his own pride. Usually that player is side-lined as soon as possible.
Partly off topic: timesofmalta.com currently uses “Fawty Towers” in one of its headlines, and “Fawtly Towers” somewhere in the text.
Part of me wants to think that whoever it was did this knowingly, but part of me knows the sad truth…
I have concluded that Debono has a hidden agenda.
Could it be that he is engineering a plan to topple Gonzi so that he can be the leader of the PN?
[Daphne – No, as if. It’s very simple. Manuel Delia – Austin Gatt’s main man – is seeking selection as a candidate on the same district as Franco Debono and has been going to organised stuff there. When Debono found out, he bounced off the walls and hasn’t stopped doing so. He actually wants to be the ONLY PN candidate on that district (ghax miskin, il-vera baghta hafna jahasra, kif tghid il-kulhadd il-mami tieghu). He’s targeting Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici because he wants to be made minister for justice instead of him, with Mifsud Bonnici keeping the police portfolio. When Mifsud Bonnici was hospitalised with a serious condition recently, he thought his moment had come and he seized the day, only to be politely slapped down. He is now expected to pull some stunt with the justice vote in the budget in a few weeks, which would of course bring down the government as this is a money vote. The way he seems to reason is that if he can’t be a minister, then nobody else in his party can. As I said earlier and keep repeating, it’s a really good thing that they’ve got one of Malta’s best psychiatrists in the cabinet.]
Come to think of it Mintoff constantly undermined PM Boffa as he wanted to take full control the MLP.
Foolishly, Boffa did everything to appease him to NO avail as Mintoff wanted to take the reigns at all cost, even if it meant splitting of the party..
Dr. Gonzi must not let his party and government to be controlled by this ungrateful and disloyal MP.
[Daphne – Call me odd, but it’s not the ungratefulness and disloyalty that worry me so much as the lack of intelligence and the apparent absence of mental stability. I can take a sane and intelligent disloyal and ungrateful bastard, but remove the first two qualities from the equation and it’s time to seriously worry.]
Obviously, there are no easy answers, but the executive committee, unanimously, must stop this man, even if it meant calling early election and not allowing Debono and his sidekick, JPO, to stand for election ever again for betraying their party’s oath.
[Daphne – I don’t actually think they’re working together. The indications are to the contrary, and that Pullicino Orlando appears to be embarrassed to be linked with Debono.]
You can add John Dalli and Robert Arrigo to the above list of ‘intelligent’ (not) people.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20111104/local/dalli-asks-ba-to-take-action-against-lou-bondi.392200
When does John Dalli actually do the work he’s paid to do?
What is an EU Commissioner like John Dalli doing interfering with the freedom of Maltese journalism and with fair questions asked on a prime-time TV programme?
He reported Lou Bondi to the Broadcasting Authority, describing himself as a simple ‘Maltese citizen’ when he is an EU Commissioner and answerable to the EU Parliament. He is not a private citizen and it’s about time he took that on board.
I know that this has been said before, but it’s tragic that someone like Louis Galea has been replaced with this….man.
I know that you claim to be a good judge of character, but I saw dangerous primadonnas in both this clown and your other favourite Jeffrey way before you did.
[Daphne – I hadn’t a clue who Franco Debono was and don’t believe I ever even mentioned him before he hit the news for the wrong reasons.]
Franco Debono is at this very moment signing the death warrant of his political career. And what for?
It’s not like this is a confidence vote in the government.
The worst that can happen is Austin Gatt’s resignation and I see even that as close to impossible.
I can’t see Debono gaining anything from this, except that the people who voted for him in the last election will remember his actions and not vote for him again.
I pity those Labour supporters who think this is going to be a repeat of 1998, and who have been encouraging Debono for his ‘bravery’.
Now let’s see whether there’s going to be space made for him in Muscat’s skip.
But everybody seems to forget that Debono is getting far too big for his boots- just watch him in Court.
Debono is on a dangerous ego-trip and this is the result of his incompetence as a people listener. As Daphne said, he will be definitely a nobody after the coming election and he knows it.
I am sure Franco Debono is digging his own grave.
‘…. take the easy way out, let others do the work, and rest on his laurels, such as they are’ .
Last week, Muscat was all over the place making sure his computer doesn’t end up the object of investigation by the police.
‘……..the tenacity and single-mindedness which Debono, for better or worse, demonstrates on a regular basis.’
Franco Debono decides to show his respect for parliament and the Constitution by hinting at another no-show.
Strange how they seem to be doing a Zelig lately.
Franco Debono said in parliament today that state television is now worse than it was in the 1980s. How old was he then?
He also said that Lou Bondi spent the day attacking him on his blog.
What are we coming to?
Who has the right to silence anyone’s free speech if what they are saying is not criminal slander?
I shudder to think what state television is going to be like with Labour in government. Certain Nationalist MPs are starting to behave like Labour politicians, and I don’t mean in their opposition to their own party, but in their general attitude.
How were their undemocratic views left undetected and skewed perspective left undetected?
‘Muscat lagged behind because he lacks – even as we can observe today – the tenacity and single-mindedness which Debono, for better or worse, demonstrates on a regular basis. Muscat is fundamentally lazy, with a tendency to cut corners, take the easy way out, let others do the work, and rest on his laurels, such as they are.’
Very well put. There was a time when I thought that Muscat, when he inevitably becomes prime minister, would at least be a change from the bitter and twisted socialist prime ministers we had in the past.
NowI can see that his laziness will allow all the old ghouls – Joe Grima, Alex Sceberras Trigona and Karmenu Schembri free rein to bring back the ‘Golden Years’ of socialist government, with all its hatred, divisiveness, envy and lanzit.
It’s pretty sad that Franco Debono can’t see this.
I honestly think that Dr Debono is really concerned about the well being of the people.
[Daphne – How about if instead of thinking, you just find out the facts? There are people out there who actually know what his motivation is, and they have been writing about it. This is not guessing, but based on information to which they have access, coupled with close observation of the man. You don’t defend the people’s interest by digging your heels in and trying to brink the government to the brink of chaos, because that brings the country to instability. You don’t cause instability for the sake of a ruddy bus service which is going to be worked out anyway. Get a sense of proportion. My God, look at Italy for heaven’s sake. It’s just been announced that they’re going to be under IMF supervision, and 60 miles away we’ve got our jobs and our houses and we’re whining about a blinking bus service, and this when most of us DRIVE.]
From what I heard today he has been pleading with the PM to listen to him and do something about it.
[Daphne – Franco Debono is forever pleading with people to listen to him, but then he himself listens to no one. He will bend your ear for hours on his favourite subject of how much he has suffered (kemm baghtejt…!) and it makes you – or at least, me – want to shake him. Suffered? How? By living at home with mummy who cooks and cleans for him while he goes out to his day job and gets political favours to stop him throwing yet another tantrum, like a child given sweets at the supermarket counter? Please. I’ve really run out of patience.]
I don’t know why it came to this but I honestly think that the PM had a good opportunity to get rid of Dr A Gatt and lost it.
[Daphne – WHAT? GOOD OPPORTUNITY TO GET RID OF AUSTIN GATT? ARE YOU NUTS? WHY WOULD HE WANT TO GET RID OF HIM? IT’S FRANCO DEBONO THE GOVERNMENT REALLY WANTS AND NEEDS TO GET SHOT OF. Or are you by any chance suggesting that Debono is really worth keeping and would make a great minister, while the man who wrestled the owner-drivers out of business, something not even Mintoff would have contemplated doing, is useless? Great insight, I must say.]
In my humble opinion this Minister is doing more damage to the PN than good and probably his antics are upstaging the good work done by other ministers.
[Daphne – Austin Gatt’s only problem is that he is direct in a country that prizes circumlocution. I like him because he is exactly like me in that respect, and I get exactly the same reaction. Maltese social culture, because it is North African/Sicilian/Italian, favours the Guido de Marco school of communication. Lack of directness, however, is alien to more democratically developed societies. You clearly equate, like many Maltese do, directness with undemocratic arrogance when it is the opposite.]
Like I said I am no expert and this is only my opinion but I think that Dr Gatt’s actions are really arrogant (especially with that University student and the comment of now having a state of the art service when then it turned ou to be a 90% failure bahh)
[Daphne – Tell me something, do: is ‘bahh’ the new internet elvespeak? Nobody actually says ‘bahh’ outside comic strips, I trust you know.]
“Maltese social culture, because it is North African/Sicilian/Italian, favours the Guido de Marco school of communication“.
Sorry, but you`re ABSOLUTELY wrong on this. I am Italo-Maltese (and love everything Italian too), hail from Valletta and support Austin Gatt through and through, favouring by far his style of politics.
[Daphne – The swallow who didn’t make the summer. But I thrilled to hear it.]
What`s so refreshing about this politician is that he doesn`t seek to be adulated (he could teach a thing or two to that showman of a colleague of his) – and that is why he has earned respect and loyalty from many quarters.
I am furious at Franco Debono`s brinkmanship style (and angry too at The Times for its editorial today).
Austin Gatt is an asset to the party and that is why he is attacked so often by Labour and now by a non plus ultra like Franco Debono.
Instead of trying to find ways to remedy the situation, Debono just gave up when the going got tough and preferred to disassociate himself from a temporary setback instead of trying to man the ship valiantly and selflessly together with his colleagues. Veru VAVU tal-prima klassi.
‘Debono’s own career will lie in shreds.’
Daphne, I beg to differ. Debono’s career is already in shreds. Sadly, he is a political has-been.
I often wonder why the national discussion in Malta is so often dominated by a cast of tiresome St. Aloysius boys who insist on subjecting the rest of the country to their adolescent squabbles.
Certainly, that is the narrative you are invoking with this column.
Yet, perhaps for Muscat and Debono’s generation, high school rivalries are not as compelling a motivation for political action as they are for your generation of Maltese public figures.
[Daphne – Franco Debono and Joseph Muscat are my generation. They are eight or nine years my junior. If they were a generation younger than mine, they would be my sons’ generation, and in their 20s. I am married to a man nine years my senior. He is not a different generation to me, though he is a generation older than Debono and Muscat. I seem to be in a different generation because I grew up at the appropriate time, and have been doing grown-up things for rather a long while. Also, when I was Debono’s and Muscat’s age, I had two sons at sixth form college and one at university and had been in public life and the so-called limelight for a good 15 years, whereas Franco Debono still lives at home with his mother and Muscat is doing in family terms what I had done already when 15 years younger than he is now. This may seem irrelevant, but it is not. They both seem to be developmentally retarded for their age, and I think it’s because they have been allowed to extend their 20s almost into their 40s, mentally and emotionally if certainly not physically. I find it extremely irritating. Of course, they are not alone. Very many Maltese men are exactly the same, hence all these marriages going down like skittles because eventually wives decide that if mummy created the problem, then mummy can deal with it, and good luck to her.]
Perhaps that is why Debono is tacitly siding with the opposition and your above appeal will fall on deaf ears. We can only hope.
Franco Debono still lives with his mother, and his very patient girlfriend comes from a fervent Labour family.
I always remember Franco as being a real mummy’s boy.
That a political party, even in our Westminster-style two party system, has within its ranks people who hold different opinions regarding certain topics than the leadership is nothing new.
[Daphne – G_R_O_A_N. This is not about having different opinions, Albert. It’s about keeping things in perspective and weighing the consequences of inaction against the consequences of action A. and action B. What Franco Debono’s behaviour has illustrated above all is that he is not as intelligent as he thinks he is.]
Only last week a large number of Conservative MPs in the UK House of Commons expressed a vote contrary to that of their own Party Leader and Prime Minister. So I don’t know why all this fuss.
[Daphne – Yes, large number, Albert. With no risk to the government. And still look at how all hell broke loose. Also, if you vote against the whip there, you can be made to resign the whip – meaning you’re out of the party and in political Siberia. This arsehole Debono and those other arseholes Mugliett and Pullicino Orlando – excuse the language but there is currently no description more fitting – are taking advantage of the fact that the government has just a single seat majority in the house. It is THAT which makes their behaviour dishonourable. Taking advantage of situations in this manner is – as I told Pullicino Orlando in court – what marks them out more than anything as being NOT gentlemen. You may think gentlemanly behaviour is optional. I think it isn’t.]
I find this section of your article particularly scary: “While Muscat’s political career will, if Debono behaves BADLY (my caps) on Friday, get right back on track ….Debono’s own career will lie in shreds.”
Behaves badly?
[Daphne – See my notes above, Albert. I can’t stand trashy behaviour. It brings me out in hives, literally.]
You seem to imply that the only thing that matters for a politician is his or her career.
[Daphne – We’re speaking of Debono here, so the answer is a resounding Yes. You do know, I trust, that the only reason he is doing this is because Austin Gatt’s righthand man is going to contest the election on what he considers to be HIS district? He has been bouncing off the walls ever since he found out. And do you know why he’s gunning for Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici? Because he wants his job. And when Mifsud Bonnici was in hospital, he actually went after it. Appalling. Go ahead, stick up for him some more – not that I would expect anything better from somebody who has habitually voted for Labour.]
Maybe this is the case among the persons who are closest to you, but I still dream and hope that politicians (at least some), have higher ideals.
[Daphne – The persons who are closest to me are not in politics, so your supposition does not hold.]
I am not saying Debono is one of these, but taking Dr Austin Gatt head-on as he is doing, and calling the “reformed” public transport one whole mess as it really is, without mincing words, is an indication of political courage.
[Daphne – Bollocks. But then you are spectacularly uninformed. People who sacrifice everything they can to their own narrow self-interest are not courageous but narcissistic. Hence, I must stress, Dom Mintoff and his own actions in 1998. Courageous, my eye. Just another A1 narcissist.]
U hallih jastjeni Daph.
Issa jigu ndaqs u jivvota l -iSpeaker kontra l-mozzjoni.
Dr Gatt huwa ragel fuq l-irgiel. Jekk ghadu bl-istess fehma li ma jikkontestax l-elezzjoni li jmiss, nissuggerilu jghallem ftit lil xi backbenchers xi tfisser tkun leali lejn il-partit u lejn il-kap.
XI backbenchers ghandhom hafna x’jitghallmu minn Dr Gatt.
I agree with the cause that Franco is campaigning for, but this is just taking it overboard. Destabilizing the government can send the country into turmoil. Who is going to be responsible for that?
I can’t understand why Debono is claiming a democratic deficit.
If there were really a democratic deficit he would be shut up but he hasn’t, as far as I know.
If he’s been given five minutes in parliament, it shows that he’s not as important as the Prime Minister, but no surprise there. He isn’t.
Still, frankly, I never thought Franco Debono smart. He’s in love with himself and in love with his voice.
If he were smart, he would behave himself well and not like a petulant and nagging, foot-stamping child.
I have just heard the incredible lengthy speech of the privileged Dr Franco Debono.
It is now so transparently obvious that his supposed pleas for bus-users are being used for his personal hidden agenda.
He is bitter and angry for not being given a cabinet position or made a chairman like that other troublemaker Jeffrey. He was supposed to speak about Arriva and instead he ranted on about PBS, John Dalli and Lou Bondi too.
And Bondi cannot even file for libel because Debono has parliamentary immunity.
Politically, Franco Debono will soon be making news only when he posts photos of himself reading in bed, his breakfast showing one egg and two sausages, his mukk of Earl Grey and his newly acquired pussy.
What’s the equivalent of injecting Botox in the legal profession?
Albert Farrugia’s comment that in the UK Conservatives MP expressed a vote contrary to that of their party leader was about remaining in the EU or not and not about a bloody bus service.
If it was not for this stupid primadonna Franco, this vote of no confidence would have taken a few miniutes and not a whole day.
For what it is worth I still cannot fathom the suicidal comments that minister Gatt uttered upon the launch of the new service, coupled with his 20 more years in government remark. and good night sleep remark.
Has he become the fall guy to take heat off the government, seeing that he wants out of the arena?
Now there is a confidence vote in the government, and Gonzi will remove any doubt about his government’s legitimacy.
Franco already said that he will vote in favour.
So election time will be in 2013.
Tonight’s viewing:
Jesmond Mugliett interviewed by Saviour Balzan on Favourite Channel
John Bundy interviews Robert Musumeci on Super One
Franco Debono on Xarabank
Marlene Pullicino on Xarabank too
….which explains why Jeffrey gave us a break tonight.
Pearl of wisdom (one of many) posted on Brian Hanford’s Facebook wall:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=626983175
“Brian Hansford: indunajtu ghax il-PM ser jitlob vot ta’ fiducja waqfu l-attakki fuq franco debono?”
It is Austin Gatt not Franco Debono who embarrassed his party and his government … but Daphne’s comments are always conditioned by any threat of the possibility of having Labour in government.
This blog has a one track direction.
[Daphne – There’s no such thing as a ‘one-track direction’. It’s either a one-track mind or a single direction. This blog is committed to one thing only: the fight against ignorance, stupidity, irrationality and confused thinking, of which your comment is a remarkably good example. You belong to that insufferable class of person who thinks that in order to seem clever, to himself as well as others, he has to run down 1. Austin Gatt and 2. the government. What I find interesting is that this same class of person no longer sees fit to praise Joseph Muscat or the Labour Party, which kinds of leaves them in a dark hole..]
I’m watching Xarabank and can now understand why Jeffrey could not stay a minute longer with Marlene. Unbearable. For the first time, I could associate myself with Jeff.
[Daphne – She left him. ]
Hamalla kbira. If I were Peppi I would have kicked her off air.
Franco Debono miskin bghata? Qal illi ix xandir huwa ghar min zmien it-80jiet?
Taf ghaliex?
Ghax dak iz-zmien Franco kien ghadu l-iskola imma minghajr klassi ghax KMB kellu gwerra kontra l-iskejjel tal-knisja.
U fuq ix-xandir kienu juru Run Rabbit Run flok il-cartoons.
Hallina Franco bi kwietna ghax int kont ghadek tfal dak iz-zmien li qed issemmi.
I agree with that what Franco Debono wants now is the Justice Ministry.
And tonight on Xarabank he already hinted what he will do during budget votes as he criticized our justice system, so this farce will be on again in a few weeks’ time.
If I were the Prime Minister I would call his bluff. His political career is over anyway.
Why do we have to blow everything out of proportion? Franco Debono is not really concerned about buses arriving late at Hal Ghaxaq because with the old system buses stopped the service to the village at 8.30pm, and now they have buses as late as 11pm.
There’s also a night bus from Paceville. The service has improved a lot in the last two weeks. I know that because unlike Debono I use it every day.
Joseph Muscat’s declared ambition is to be Malta’s youngest-ever prime minister.
I think Franco Debono has exactly the same aspirations.
[Daphne – They’re too late already. Mintoff beat them to it long ago.]
Daphne, Franco Debono should not be trusted to work in any department let alone in Castille.
Like you said, his nefarious motives are crystal clear- he wants no PN candidate to challenge his district or else he is prepared to bring down the government. Debono is no honourable gentleman as he placed his interest before his nation, his constituents who put him there thinking they are electing a PN candidate and his party. No one believes for a second that he abstained from voting for the sake of democracy. Only a fool thinks the people are fools.
I hope the Prime Minister doesn’t succumb to blackmail. After the budget vote Dr. Gonzi should kick him out of Castille and go on national television and tell the people what were Debono’s true intentions. The PM must put the brakes now. Only bad things can come out from this MP. JPO will be also watching to see how the PM will react.
Dr.Gonzi and the party still have some leverage here as Debono is now finished. No one trusts him and not even the MLP. As you revealed Daphne, Muscat will never trust his former classmate and the MLP surely doesn’t need any former PN candidate to win the Ghaxaq district.
What a self destructive man.