All the madmen…

Lou Bondì is probably ruing his decision to give so much airtime to Franco Debono this week. The resulting encounter last Tuesday - which made for exhilarating television, by the way - did much to dispel at least a few of the general misconceptions surrounding the crisis in which this country now visibly founders.

More significantly still, it also laid bare the blueprint of how government spin doctors deal (unsuccessfully, in this case) with perceived threats to their beloved Prime Minister. But there was another reason why Lou Bondì should perhaps have thought twice before giving Debono a platform to air his views to a much wider public than before.

Did anyone else notice a rather glaring difference in online comments immediately before and immediately after his performance on Bondiplus? I certainly did. Before, Facebook was literally awash with viral Franco Debono jokes, arising mostly from how the issue had until that point been projected by the media (especially on TVM). Some were funnier than others, but pretty much all hinged on the same general theme: Debono is challenging Gonzi. Therefore, Debono must be insane.

Ding, dong, bell. And please note I mean 'insane' in the 'stark, raving lunatic' sense of the word. Not eccentric, not quirky, not slightly off his trolley, or anything like that... but certifiably cuckoo, downright psychotic, dangerously deranged, and so on. Hence the photo-shopped images of Debono in a straitjacket or a padded cell (or both); or the altogether more tasteful and stylish variation which placed him on the cover of Ozzie Osbourne's 'Diary of a Madman' album.

After the programme? The general flavour of online reactions was slightly different. A lot of people who had never actually heard the points Debono has been raising for over two years now (and which have been studiously ignored, both by government and the media which feed on the crumbs that fall from its table) were suddenly heard muttering things like: OK, I still think he's nuts, BUT... he does have a point on this; or he may be onto something with that; and let's face it, it's true that such and such is a serious issue... among other variations of the same theme.

Put simply, the TV event of the week provided a much-needed basis for comparison between the widely-held view of Franco Debono as madman - lovingly embraced and circulated by people who either don't know him at all, or who have an immediate interest in discrediting him - and the Franco Debono we all saw deftly putting Lou Bondì in his place last Tuesday. I think we can all safely agree that the latter (i.e., real) Franco Debono is still a loose cannon. Clearly he possesses a fatally unpredictable streak that makes for a dangerously volatile politician. But for all these and other flaws, I fail to see how anyone can contend with his actual arguments themselves.

In a moment I will return to these arguments, and why I think mainstream PN supporters continue to ignore them at their own party's dire peril. But for the time being I am more concerned with the underlying significance of the chosen line of attack - which, like all political smears tactics, tells us infinitely more about the people who resort to it, than the target himself.

From day one I have had difficulties with this 'madman' motif. Unlike most people who have taken visible delight in dismembering him in recent weeks, I happen to be acquainted with Franco Debono. Not very well acquainted, I admit; but well enough to be able to form an educated opinion... which is more than 90% of his detractors can currently claim. In various conversations I have had with the man - mostly about rather boring issues like the rights of persons in detention, the state of Corradino prisons, etc., etc. (you know, the sort of stuff that never interests anybody, until they themselves, or people dear to them, are under arrest or in prison) - I have not so much questioned his sanity, as wondered what the hell he was doing in the Nationalist Party in the first place.

Let's face it: Franco Debono directly challenges all the most basic elements of the status quo that the PN has consistently defended throughout recent history. He therefore fits in with the typical PN mould about as neatly as a condom machine might fit in the corridors of the Archbishop's Curia. So what is he even doing in a party that quite plainly represents the opposite of what he actually believes?

Debono's generic answer to this question is that he joined the PN because 'he has ideas'. Ouch! I must say it's a pity he never actually said so on the few times we spoke: otherwise I could have long ago spelt out to him what should be obvious to everyone at this late stage.

The Nationalist Party doesn't give a damn about ideas. Not Franco Debono's, nor anybody else's for that matter. It is only interested in the hatful of extra votes a popular lawyer like he (popular at the time, anyway) might be able to squeeze out of the fifth district... and even then, only for its own benefit, and not for Debono's or any of his constituents (look under Power Station Extension, Delimara, for further details).

Anything extra is unwanted baggage in a political candidate - and... oh look: Franco now finds that he is not only unwanted, but downright detested. So you see: having ideas is a dangerous pastime in 21st century Malta. You might even end up needing police protection outside your (and your mother's) front door...

But leaving all that aside: it is the tactic used to get rid of him that speaks volumes about the state of democracy in this country. Fish out of water Debono may well be, in a party that is now little more than an extension (some might say prisoner) of its leader's name. But that does not make him a lunatic. At least, not yet: though I grant that he might well end up completely potty (maybe already has) by the time all this is over. But he certainly did not start this protracted tug-of-war from a position of clinical insanity... for the simple reason that 'insanity', by definition, is made up of much more 'insane' stuff than the generally lucid arguments he brought forward last Tuesday.

Besides: where is the madness is declaring that 'Gonzi is out of touch with the electorate'? That much alone was amply illustrated by Gonzi's handling of the divorce referendum last year. He did, after all, defy the result and go on to boast that he was all along 'on the right side of history' (which incidentally means that the rest of the known universe - barring Gonzi himself and the Philippines - is on history's wrong side. Go figure...)

And why is it 'lunacy' to argue that the Prime Minister is less interested in achieving political results, than in keeping content an ever-diminishing number of choice party favourites? I would have thought this simple observation emerges directly from Gonzi's own handling of any number of affairs: not least the Arriva reform (the same reform Bondì now describes as an overwhelming success); the BWSC issue; and many, many more. The pattern has always been the same: non-delivering sycophants and political stooges are retained, and the stink of their corruption (or mismanagement, depending on the issue) is glossed over with a dash of perfume... no matter how many and how preposterous the cock-ups concerned.

And yet, the man making all these amply verifiable assertions is roundly written off as a lunatic... while the glaring truth of the assertions themselves is either ignored, or much worse, perverted into insane ramblings by an assortment of online 'papagalli' who simply receive, digest, and re-transmit whatever message their political masters want them to disseminate on their behalf.

All of which makes you wonder. Since when is 'being right' a universally recognised symptom of mental illness? Is it now a crime to be manifestly more intelligent than your TV chat-show host? And above all, why do people react with such open hostility when someone turns around and points out that which has been a naked reality for over two years... i.e., that Lawrence Gonzi, who never had much of a political programme to begin with, is now so taken up with the impossible task of keeping all his grubby little sycophants happy, that he has no real power left to actually govern?

Here's another example: this time directly from Tuesday's Bondiplus. At one point, Lou asked Debono if he felt entitled to lecture the PN about democracy. Again, the question itself tells us much, much more about the PN (not to mention Bondi) than about Franco Debono. It tells us, for instance, that the PN now feels it has nothing whatsoever to learn about democracy from anyone... and this is hardly a reassuring thought, viewed in the context of the Prime Minister's open disdain for the divorce referendum result last May.

Debono's reply? "Yes, I do. Because democracy is a living thing: it's not something you achieve once, and then go to sleep..."

Is that the mad, incoherent rambling of a sick mind? Hardly. Not even I - paragon of sanity that I undeniably am - could have answered the question so promptly and succinctly. And so correctly, too: for it is undeniable that the PN thinks democracy was all about winning the 1987 elections, and nothing more. And it is equally true that the same party's democratic credentials have been in hibernation ever since.

That is why, from 1987 onwards, the PN has consistently perverted the democratic rules of engagement to its own advantage, and against everybody else's (third parties and minority views most of all). That is also why the same party has so doggedly resisted such basic ingredients of functional democracy as a law to regulate party financing: still on the drawing board after a 'discussion' period lasting over 20 years... despite the fact that it was none other than Gonzi himself, way back in 1994, who had chaired the commission calling for the same reform.

It also explains why the PN never felt compelled to rectify any of the injustices against which it had railed so passionately when in opposition the 1970s and 1980s. Having ridden to power in 1987 on the backs of the families dispossessed by Mintoff's nationalisation policies... well, the incoming government never actually made the necessary amends or righted any of the individual wrongs, did it? In many cases it actually compounded these injustices, by rendering any form of future redress impossible - one classic example being the sale of BOV shares to the public, which dashed any hope of restoring the bank to its original owners.

The beautiful irony, of course, is that the PN still relies on the support of the same people it betrayed... and receives that support, too, because... well... actually I have no idea why. Perhaps there is a touch of insanity affecting everyone these days. After all, how 'sane' is it to constantly reward the selfsame people who have betrayed you, and then allow yourself to be used as a foot soldier against the occasional lone individual who actually tries to fight on your behalf?

But let us leave Franco for the moment: for it is now clear that his political star, having blazed rather fiercely over the past week, is about to be unceremoniously snuffed out. Personally I am far more interested in the unsettling truth that his treatment has so far illustrated about Malta as a whole: not about Gonzi this time; but about the electorate which produces people like Gonzi by the unerring law of supply and demand.

This is the scary part of what the Debono incident has exposed for all to see. I have long suspected it, though I have never been able to pinpoint it with any accuracy. But there is a now visibly topsy-turvy, 'Alice-in-Wonderland' sort of dynamic that underpins our country like a political cancer, and this is (roughly) what it looks like.

Having grown so inured to political nepotism and corruption; to mediocrity and anti-meritocracy; to partisan tribalism, and the sheer sadistic delight that the ever-degenerating political mob always takes in the discomfiture and humiliation of its perceived political 'enemies'... we have come round to viewing such realities as 'normal' (and therefore 'sane').

By the same token, anybody who challenges this dominant status quo - or who so much as dares to suggest that our State is rotten to the core, and that we really do deserve a good deal better than this bottomless quagmire of filth and rubbish - well, those are the people instantly depicted as 'abnormal' and therefore... 'mad'.

George Orwell might have had a thing or two to say about this self-evident subversion of values ('War is Peace', 'Sanity is Insanity'. etc.). But by the same law that turned Debono into a madman and his sympathisers, if any, into traitors, I imagine that no stone would be left unturned to depict Orwell himself as an upstart intruder, a pruzuntus, a foreign interferer, and a psychologically disturbed criminal to boot.

This, I fear, is what Malta has evolved into 25 years after 'achieving democracy' in 1987. Disagree with the GonziPN doctrine, and Gonzi's pitbulls will tear you to pieces.

On a personal note, I have to say I am disappointed that among those who have launched themselves into the ongoing, mindless vilification parade (also straight out of the pages of Orwell, by the way, where it is called 'Hate Week') are a few individuals I once - long ago - used to respect.

But I am thankful for the crisis itself; as it has finally exposed us all, for better or for worse, for what we truly are.