I hate having to write this for publication in Christmas week, but I am left with no choice because Franco Debono, manifesting the contempt for other people’s enjoyment of the season which Dom Mintoff showed year upon year before him, has decided this is the appropriate time to try and spoil things in a last-ditch attempt at getting people to look at him before the year is out.

It should now be obvious, even to those who couldn’t see it before, that Debono has serious problems which need not be gone into for public consumption in a newspaper in this festive period. Those problems have to be dealt with, not coped with or worked around. If those who have been busy handling him and trying to manage him couldn’t see this one coming, then they need a basic course in personality problems.

So you get him safely through the parliamentary vote of confidence in a cabinet minister and on the budget, and then what? Quite obviously, he comes back with new ways to cause trouble almost immediately - because he didn’t get what he wanted in the first place, which is the justice portfolio.

The thing everyone seems to be ignoring here is that Franco Debono, like others with his sort of issues, has a plan. His behaviour is neither random nor chaotic, but carefully orchestrated. He is so focussed that he has even ignored Christmas completely. He hasn’t said to himself that nobody is going to feel like his antics at this time of the year, when we prefer to forget about politics and celebrate.

That, too, should have been obvious: that this wasn’t about Austin Gatt or Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici or the budget or the prime minister or democracy or what have you. It was and is about Franco Debono having decided back in 2008 that he was going to be justice minister before the term was out, and then coming up with ways to achieve that personal goal.

First he tried to impress the prime minister with his clever ideas. When that didn’t work, he tried pulling law-and-justice-related stunts to win the admiration of the public, which would in turn create pressure on the prime minister, he thought, to put him in charge of the relevant ministry.

And then when that didn’t work either, he began telephoning and brow-beating people at all hours of the day and night, with no respect for people’s privacy, home life or good manners. When even that failed, as was right and proper, Debono went headlong into battle, first by threatening to collude with the Opposition on the matter of Austin Gatt and the confidence vote, then creating the impression that he would vote with the Opposition on the budget.

When he was given time to speak in parliament, he spoke about justice matters, not public transport. Even a blind, deaf and dumb person should have worked out by this time where he was headed.

Now here he is, giving the prime minister an ultimatum: if he doesn’t split the ministry of justice and home affairs, then Debono isn’t going to support the prime minister. At this point, even those who doubted his need for help should have woken up to just how serious his issues are, how grave his detachment from reality.

People quoted in the press have been listing the reasons why the prime minister shouldn’t give in. Do they really need to be listed? To my mind, there is absolutely no question of the prime minister giving in, for roughly the same reasons that it is standard practice not to negotiate with terrorists. Apart from those reasons, there is the primary one that it is the prime minister, and not a jumped-up backbencher with issues, who is the boss and calls the shots, and this should be made clear to all.

You don’t have to be a psychiatrist or a member of MI5’s anti-terrorist team to work out that should the prime minister himself manifest signs of psychological disturbance by giving in to this person’s request to split the ministry, Debono’s next demand will be immediate: that he will be the new justice minister. Debono isn’t doing this because democracy dictates that home affairs and justice should not sit in the same portfolio. He’s doing it because he wants to be minister of justice and this is the best way he can think of to get that sorted.

Franco Debono is unwell, by his own admission, and the sooner this is acknowledged publicly and dealt with privately, as such things should be, the better for democracy. I rather suspect that this is what Joe Saliba meant when he said that an early election is not the solution. He’s right. It’s not. You don’t put the country under the pressure and uncertainty of an early election, when there are so many external pressures already, just because one MP needs help and everybody pretends in public that he doesn’t while saying quite different things in private.

The Constitution is clear on the matter of MPs and electoral candidates who are incapacitated in this manner. It is not, however, clear on how the situation must be handled for the removal of MPs who are unwell. One thing is certain: you do not call an election to remove an MP who should not be there in the first place.

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