A political Baryshnikov

It takes more than the hunting version of road rage to destroy 3,000 trees. It takes planning and deliberation, a clear intent expressed in stealth and in the madness of method. We have been told that it has cost us, as Maltese taxpayers and citizens of the EU, about Lm50,000.

The destruction of Lm50,000 worth of vegetation seems like a gnat bite by comparison to many other unsolved political crimes such as the murders of Raymond Caruana and Karen Grech. It is still a political crime, a minor form of terrorism. Demoting it to mere willful damage to property would be absurd. It held a clear message that was read by the entire population even though nobody claimed responsibility. It was a challenge to the state.

The government, in the form of Environment Minister George Pullicino, adopted the eco-terrorists' method of communication. The last five days of the hunting season were withdrawn not because of the arboreal vandalism but because too many protected birds had been blasted from the skies. That message too was fully understood by the entire population. It held the menace of further action in the same direction, maybe.

Performing a political pirouette with surprising deftness and grace, Minister Pullicino appeared to avoid head-on collision with the criminals but sent them a message they cannot fail to understand. It was a horse's head in the bedclothes, not the clink of handcuffs. This is an island south of Sicily after all.

It offends every one who has ever been obliged to pay a parking fine. Not having shown the least compunction about the slaughter of birds migrating to breed for years before, having taken on all ornithophiles and the EU Commission in a show of bluster and obstinacy, having rolled out its big guns in the form of the Prime Minister himself in defence of spring hunting, the government suddenly became conscious of the slaughter of protected species. Or did it suddenly realise that some hunters had made their lobby expendable?

Quite naturally very many of us breathed a sigh of relief. At last the government had shown itself capable of resisting the Rambo rabble. Much more than that has happened. The volte face is also a tour de force. At this point Labour cannot defend the hunters. It too must admit that the defence of hunting and the humiliation of the other two-party politics has gone too far.

Roderick Galdes' commitment to defend hunters' rights in the EU now leaves the MLP out on a limb. We have had a decade of PN and MLP grovelling before the hunters' lobby because of the blackmail stalemate imposed by the other parties on one another. At this point an MLP insistence on its 1996 opportunism would serve the PN superbly. So would another act of vandalism: the spring hunting issue could be zapped for good in the wake of the next paroxysm of hunting imbecility. A small riot would wrap it all up. A big riot could see the end of autumn hunting too.

Our governments have always placed political expedience above respect for the rule of law. It has become a cultural given. One typical instance was the pardon granted to the General Worker's Union leadership following their arrest during a riot some years ago. The arrest was a show of strength but once the crisis was over, it was no longer expedient to pursue the matter and rekindle the flames. It was a tremendous injustice to everyone ever punished for any crime or contravention lacking a political flavour.

Acknowledging that it is not politically expedient to punish the tree slayers and those slaughtering protected birds, the government has punished all hunters indiscriminately. Pirouette or otherwise, it can hardly now point out that hunting in spring should not have been allowed in the first place. First it countenanced an illegality and then retracted it causing an injustice in the upside down world of its own making. The move became irresistible once it was realised that this would also turn the hunting issue inside out and reverse the bi-partisan stalemate on the issue. Anyone dizzy yet?

Ducking the issue of the destruction of 3,000 trees, the deliberate evaporation of Lm50,000 worth of public funds in an act of the most profound philistine vandalism, is a continuation of the government's habit of avoiding confrontation with anarchy. It is not a matter of cost, nor of the loss of the trees, but a question of government. The rebels who raised a Venetian flag on the spire of St Mark's Cathedral some years ago went to jail for a very long time. It may have seemed an excessive punishment for a symbolic rebellion. It was inevitable. The Italian republic could not afford to duck the issue. Would our former colonial rulers have ignored such a challenge? Why should our own government fail to act firmly and unequivocally?

Our government thinks it cannot afford to do so in an election run up. It is a sad mistake: Unless all such acts of deliberate defiance are vigorously repressed they become a standing invitation to similar acts of terrorist vandalism on any conceivable issue by any anarchic numbskull. The state is far too vulnerable to allow this to go on. The victims of arson attacks and all other political crimes deserve better. It should be made clear to every one of us that the state will not stand to be blackmailed by cowards and vandals; that at every such occurrence it will put everything on hold until the criminals are caught and punished.

By exploiting them without mentioning them, our government has made the decapitated trees at Mellieha a symbol of its weakness, of the weakness of governments holding onto power by their fingernails and unable to address any major reform or to truly confront any anarchic minority.

It showed that the government's respect for the rule of law is far weaker than we have every right to expect as EU citizens; that is, it prefers, compromise and evasion to confrontation even on the most vital issues. At last the government has chosen to appear to defend the birds. It still does not dare defend the state, the essential basis of our peaceful co-existence. It is missing the wood for the trees and feeling clever about it.

This is the time for the Greens to offer their support to the government. With a 31 per cent approval rating on environmental issues, the Greens are where the government wishes it could be. If the Minister of the Environment made it clear that spring hunting is ended for good we are more than willing to back him up. Would it not be better to have the Greens on board than to stick to ambiguity and half measures that displease everybody? Together we could even avoid further damage to the rule of law.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - the Green party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt, www.adgozo.com