Franco Debono, criminal defense lawyer, politician and haiku writer. A political visionary who, elected in 2008 as PN government’s youngest member of Parliament campaigned for and formulated some of the most important reforms since Independence. His name is synonymous with constitutional reform for which he campaigned in and out of Parliament for almost five years (2008-2013) including by formulating a wide ranging and holistic justice reform – www.riformagustizzja.com – the likes of which Malta had not seen in the last hundred years. Two years later a commission appointed by the Labour government known as the Bonello commission took on board all the proposals made by Franco Debono in a report that was however not as wide ranging as the Debono proposals. Practically in spirit and substance the Bonello report was a replica if the proposals Debono had formulated in Parliament years earlier. In this context Debono is best known as being the prime mover for the introduction of the right to legal advise for arrested persons, which up to 2010 was completely excluded in Malta, in what coupd possibly be the only country in the world at the time to still exclyde such a right declared a fundamental human right by the European Court of Fundamental Human Rights.
