I could have used some other metaphor to describe Franco Debono’s periodic returns to the public scene. The one I used, lit up all manner of outrage. I could have called him a mushroom that sprouts back every time you clean it out, mould that blotches the roof after every rain. Or a particularly buoyant turd that remerges after the fifth flush. Or a persistent semen stain in a confessional. Maybe every one of those metaphors would have complained of feeling hurt with a comparison with Franco Debono.
But metaphors are unnecessary. Franco Debono speaks for himself. This man, ostensibly offended by a comparison I made, finds this as the right time to blame for my opinion of him a woman who has been dead 6 years.
What did I say about toxic masculinity? He is so incensed with me that he needs to find a woman he can insult as a proxy, a sort of whipping target for his paranoid delusions. But his reference to Daphne Caruana Galizia is no accident. He didn’t exhume any woman for his retribution.
Don’t dismiss Franco Debono’s post as the furious, ill-considered reaction of someone too spontaneous for his own good. Simon Mercieca, that other pedlar of falsehoods, interpreted the intent of Franco Debono’s statement correctly. Franco Debono is not mere noise. He is committed to the effort to get Yorgen Fenech off the hook and that’s what this is about.
Hours after Yorgen Fenech’s first arrest in 2019, Franco Debono approached me directly encouraging me to describe Fenech as a fall guy for the “real” perpetrators of the murder of the person he speaks so terribly of today. He should have known his arguments would not impress me. I would later read them in the writings and postings of other, more easily gullible, puppets, presumably impressed by his company.
People who mean well advise me to leave Franco Debono alone. That he’s unimportant. That if ignored he’ll vanish. That I’m doing him favours even writing about him. But that’s not what happened, is it? That’s not what happened at all. He’s back despite years of being ignored, carried on the shoulders of allies all over the place.
Alex Borg, the most senior PN politician endorsing Franco Debono’s return before Bernard Grech was put on the spot last Sunday and forced to choose between renouncing Franco Debono or embracing him, declared in response to my post and in defence of his buddy that “Manuel Delia is not the PN”.
That quote, such as it is, made it to the headlines of Malta Today.
What is the statement “Manuel Delia is not the PN” in response to? Have you heard someone say otherwise?
Well Alex Borg I sure agree with you I’m not the PN. But you, I imagine you think, are. Being nobody, as you rightly point out, I don’t have to defend my opinion as to whether Franco Debono should or should not be in public life. My opinion matters to no one because my opinion changes nothing. But you must answer for your opinion that he should for being the PN you are accountable for such opinions. Your opinions matter.
The above screenshot is Franco Debono’s reaction to this nobody’s criticism. How will he react to someone’s criticism when he’s a minister? Which body will he exhume in response to someone having a less glowing opinion of him than he holds?
Do you stand by your recommendation, Alex Borg? Does this look stable to you? Is this the future you want us to look forward to? For, perhaps because I helped him, Franco Debono shows us our future in the present.