It was a grave mistake by those who launched the anti-spring hunting referendum not to go for a total ban of hunting and trapping immediately. Photo: Jason BorgIt was a grave mistake by those who launched the anti-spring hunting referendum not to go for a total ban of hunting and trapping immediately. Photo: Jason Borg

The history of crime in Malta may have been rewritten last week after the Magistrates’ Court ordered the police to investigate six conservationists for posing in a photo showing protected birds shot down by our army of hunters.

The argument put forward by the illustrious magistrate is that he did not know if those six young people wearing Birdlife T-shirts were authorised to have those birds in their possession. The police should therefore investigate them, establish their identity and prosecute them criminally.

The Commissioner of Police had argued that those youths had no criminal intent and were only raising awareness of how the protected birds were being shot down. But the magistrate said it was not up to the commissioner to decide that and agreed with the lawyers of the hunters’ lobby, the FKNK, that the police should criminally charge the activists.

Fascinating how blind justice can be.

Now there were other things the magistrate could have told the police to do. He could have told them to trace those activists, establish exactly where they had found the birds and launch an investigation to find out who had shot them. But he did no such thing. That was not what the FKNK asked for when they took the police commissioner to court. In the eyes of the FKNK, the criminals are at Birdlife but not in their ranks. Crime in Malta has a new face: innocence.

So now the police will be questioning Birdlife to find out whom those six well-meaning faces belong to and drag them to court for their atrocious crime of collecting protected birds shot down by degenerate hunters.

The new face of crime in Malta has truly changed under this government. If you get a suspended court sentence, you end up with a job at the Prime Minister’s Office. If you highlight a crime, you get prosecuted. And then we wonder why the much-vaunted Whistleblower Act doesn’t make waves.

In the midst of all of this, a man from Mġarr is caught at the airport with over 400 bird skins from Argentina. The authorities believe that the skins, from at least 120 protected species, were the accumulated collection of a number of hunters who travelled to Argentina, presumably shot them and then arranged to have them transported to Malta in bulk so they may stuff them and put them up in their showcases. This smacks of organised crime.

The incident was not new. Last year, three Maltese nationals were detained in Milan after they were caught with 180 dead protected birds. They too were coming from Argentina. Using the FKNK’s logic, those hunters are just as guilty, but certainly not more, than the Birdlife activists. After all, they too have been caught ‘in possession’.

There is clearly no compromise to be reached with our hunters, which means that it was a grave mistake by those who launched the anti-spring hunting referendum not to go for a total ban of hunting and trapping immediately. People are either against, in favour or indifferent to hunting, whatever time of year it is.

They should have gone the whole hog because, if the stakes were higher, then maybe more people might be tempted to go out and vote.

As things stand, the referendum appears doomed to fail. It will fizzle out in a symbolic protest by a conscientious minority. The hunters will win the day and they will be back with a vengeance.

Crime will soon have another face: decency

There is no way that this government will want the referendum to get through. The worst mistake that the anti-hunting lobby can make is to think that this issue is above politics. It is totally political.

A ban of spring hunting would be a big blow to Labour, possibly as much as the divorce referendum was to the Nationalist Party. Referendum or no referendum, hunters who in their majority support Labour, would see their favourite pastime banned under Labour’s watch. They will blame Labour.

Labour’s decision to postpone local elections for years so that none would coincide with the hunting referendum is only part of the equation.

Yes, Labour wants to see a poor turnout by anti-hunting voters. It knows full well that it is people with something to lose that are most ready to use their vote, rather than those with something to gain. The postponement of the local elections benefits the hunters.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has other reasons, of course. He knows that he has peaked at the recent EP elections and the only way is down from now on. That does not mean he will lose the next election, but he doesn’t want to see the downward trend already showing. He may fear a snowball effect. It’s also not good for the ego.

When asked on the impact of the postponement of local councils elections on the referendum, Muscat said: “If there is such enthusiasm and desire for a referendum to determine whether hunting should be banned or not, then supporters shouldn’t be troubled.”

His tone was clearly mocking because he knows full well hunters and their families will be out in droves at the polling stations from early morning while conscientious objectors will only trickle in, when they find the time.

It will be a mammoth task to get the referendum through and there is so much at stake that the PN should well reconsider its detached position.

Hunting can be the unmaking of Muscat’s new Labour.

The anti-hunting campaigners are offering voters nothing other than quieter walks in the countryside and maybe the chance of spotting a bird once in a while that is not a sparrow.

The Labour government is offering hunters trapping in autumn, now that a loophole has been found, thanks to our parliamentary secretary for animal (but not birds’) rights.

With local council elections out, the hunting referendum will be the last opportunity before a national election for people to tell this government that the slow, steady degeneration of this country must stop.

Labour’s mindless insistence on pleasing all and sundry, to shore up its populist support, is bringing the country to chaos. Forget the dismantling of our building regulations to feed megalomania and greed, Labour’s populism in this country is above all micro in nature. Malta is small enough to achieve that.

Labour is institutionalising patronage to a level that makes populism nearly anart form.

The tentacles of this government are everywhere and the game is obvious: appease minority interests, each one individually, even if they are in direct conflict with the interests of other minorities. It is a juggling game and Labour is making a good job of it.

Which is why the FKNK’s petition to ban abrogative referenda that impinge on minority ‘rights’ falls perfectly in line with Labour’s perverse thinking. Without any ideology, Labour has become a perversity of its old collective socialist self.

Under Labour it is not the common good that counts but individual, selfish interest. That is why FKNK and Labour are one and the same thing. That iswhy Labour will not let hunters losethe referendum.

Postponing local elections was just the first move by Labour. They have a huge party machine that is an expert in disingenuous (and successful) electoral campaigns. Bird lovers and people with a sense of decency don’t stand a chance against that powerful machine when the referendum comes along.

There will be no stopping hunters after a failed referendum because they will have right on their side. They will feel justified in their eternal slaughter. Decent people will only be able to look on helplessly at the fracas in our countryside.

Last week crime got a new face, innocence. Soon, it will add on another face: decency.

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