Today, Franco Debono, the infamous narcissistic criminal lawyer who brought down Lawrence Gonzi’s government, is nearly fifty years old. He’s of a different generation than mine, but he’s also from the South of Malta, and for this reason, I happen to know Franco Debono very well, his way of thinking, and his perceptions. In fact, I know him in a way that would terrify his inner insecurities and he won’t be able to have an open and public conversation with me over his character because he knows I’m right. He will react in his usual fashion, by attacking me in an infantile manner and requesting criminal action, censorship, and whatnot.
Franco Debono is still deeply angry at something in life, but he does not show it. It’s not a principled indignation that he has and his rage and fury are more concerned with his own personal interests. It has something to do with his new idea of becoming PN leader, but this is not what Franco Debono actually desires. What does Franco Debono really want? At face value, it’s hard to figure him out because he doesn’t stand for anything other than defending Malta’s worst-thieving and murderous scum in court and lobbying for them politically.
In reality, Franco Debono seems to be looking for something but he himself doesn’t even know what it is. He is a voracious reader and this helped him in his legal studies. Today he says he is “studying physics”, but he’s not actually doing that. He would have to learn calculus first before anything else, but he is not taking on that burden. He doesn’t want to be a physicist and he’s not interested in physics per se. This is the behaviour of a wondering reader looking for something unknown in a sea of knowledge andin a world he is still trying to understand. Franco Debono has a mid-life crisis that goes even deeper than that of the average Maltese man. It has a lot to do with his upbringing and where he came from. I can relate to Franco Debono very well because I share some of his experiences, although I believe I have handled them differently from him.
Metaphorically speaking, Franco Debono is not just from the South, he’s from the South of the South: G?axaq. Those areas, G?axaq, ?urrieq, Imqabba and Safi used to be considered in the lowest hierarchy of social status. ?ejtun was the core of Labour’s lumpenproletariat who would invade Marscala over the weekend and on Summers to cause crime and expropriate public land in Saint Thomas Bay. I grew up in Marsascala where we were slightly more Anglicised. Our parents, who were not necessarily Nationalist Party supporters bought the Malta Independent so that they could read Daphne Caruana Galizia and bought the Times of Malta on Sunday as they read it in cafes on the beautiful coast and fishing harbour. We lived alongside foreigners such as English and Italian expatriates, and Iraqi, Serbian and Bosnian refugees and had more opportunities for varied experiences than children who lived in G?axaq or Imqabba. People from the north would have looked down on children like myself and Franco Debono, but we would have looked down on our neighbours as well for being even more backward and poorer than us.
Franco Debono comes from the very end of the social barrel of social status. He knows this and he is conscious of it, so much so that he has spent his life fighting against it. As a young political activist, he grew up in a Nationalist Party with people like George Hyzler with a legacy and a higher social status that looked down on Franco Debono and his background. In this very hostile environment by elitist members of society who had historically built an aura of privilege and respect around them, Franco Debono persevered only thanks to his narcissism and self-belief: that he too deserves a place among the most respected professional and political members of Maltese society. He did it for himself and he was very successful in achieving their level of success, both politically and professionally. It’s a self-interested fight but it’s a fight that is also self-righteous in the sense that even he, as a poor nobody from G?axaq can achieve the same social status as George Hyzler.
As one of Malta’s top criminal lawyers, Franco Debono has today proved his point but is still not satisfied with himself, and hence his efforts in seeking something new such as physics or PN Party leader. He has these urges because despite the fact that he has materially, professionally and politically reached the levels of his elitist peers, he still can’t get the social status, privilege and aura that people like George Hyzler are able to project. You can see this discrepancy quite clearly when Yorgen Fenech’s first preference for a criminal lawyer is Giannella Caruana Curran and not Franco Debono. This discrepancy is derived purely from social preference and not a meritocracy. Franco Debono is nowadays, probably even better than Giannella Caruana Curran because his corrupt proclivity to befriend prosecutors and the judiciary has exceeded that of his elitist peers. This is an attempt at an objective judgment and not about my personal values. Had I needed a criminal lawyer, Franco Debono would have been my first preference because I know that under a Labour government, Franco Debono has most probably, more extra-judicial reach than Giannella Caruana Curran. This doesn’t mean that I agree that things are this way.
On the other hand, Giannella Caruana Curran is equally insecure and fearful of her status in society as Franco Debono is. She just doesn’t show it in public because she can control herself better than Franco Debono. Giannella Caruana Curran is aware that her position as one of Malta’s top criminal lawyers is not just derived from her track record, but also from her background and social status (she is Guido De Marco’s daughter) and she genuinely hates people like Franco Debono who are a threat to her business. She hates Franco Debono even more than just an ordinary competitor because Franco Debono threatens her projection as a uniquely powerful criminal lawyer whose power is visually propped up with her social status. In a way, to his own credit, Franco Debono disrupted the criminal lawyer industry. Now, thanks to Franco Debono, anyone can be a Giannella Caruana Curran and not just the elite.
But this is not necessarily a good thing. Although Franco Debono’s narcissism was the source of his success in life it is also his source of anger, desperation and continued longing. Franco Debono’s choice to outdo himself and show the world that even he can be successful was done in a way that copied and mimicked the same peers that he hated. Instead of becoming better than them, he simply exceeded them in cunning and tactics. He became better than them in their profession to the extent that he appropriated an elitist profession, but when he was there, he realised that the people and society he wanted to be part of are soulless, empty sociopathic, and decadent: criminal lawyers are at the end o the day professional lawyers servicing scum. Now, Franco Debono wants to fulfill his emptiness by finding a new cause or learning something new, only that he hasn’t figured it out yet.
I know very well how Franco Debono feels because I too experienced a similar social status to Franco Debono’s. The difference is that my generation, I think, had more children and youth who completely rejected the idea of mimicking our peers. We were more drawn to the outside world and were never impressed by criminal lawyers who defined success as getting rich by protecting murderers. Ultimately, many of my generation sought something completely different and left altogether but those of us who are still active in Malta in some way or another still dream of better things for our country. We had long removed ourselves from Malta’s rent-seeking regime and non-meritocratic mess and instead of exceeding in it, we dreamed of something better altogether. What I am trying to say is that many of us simply refuse to play by the rules, but Franco Debono is not one of these. On the contrary. Franco Debono is the ultimate high, pinnacle, and prime example of the most elite version of GonziPN. He is the best and ultimate version of what GonziPN can and should be: ultimately a political and rent-seeking nightmare of Nationalist proportions.
I would have liked to be a sixteen-year-old sitting on the street at College passing a joint to Franco Debono (he attended St Aloysius’ with Joseph Muscat). He wouldn’t have said no. Maybe he would have seen a better perspective back then, and that ultimately he shouldn’t worry so much about how people perceive him, because if he did so, he would be imprisoned in his insecurities for the rest of his life.
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