One of my favourite series of detective books is the Inspector Rebus series by Ian Rankin. The books are set in Scotland where the craggy protagonist John Rebus steers his way through the gritty underbelly of the city, avoiding corrupt senior cops and sniffing out lowlife.
Rebus is very much in the modern detective mould – troubled, heavy-drinking and broken family. That apart, he’s a realistic character and not a two-dimensional heroic seeker of justice. One of the principles he lives by and which he repeats often is “either everybody counts or nobody counts”.
This is another way of stating that everybody should be equal in the eyes of the law. Every person who is a victim of crime should be afforded a decent investigation, no matter how unimportant or powerless they are.
Similarly, all wrongdoers should be punished no matter how influential or numerous they are. Being equal in the eyes of the law is the central tenet of the justice system. It’s the reason why Lady Justice is depicted with a blindfold and holding a weighing scales in perfect equilibrium – to show that she is not looking favourably upon any party who comes before her, and that the same kind of treatment should be meted out to all.
That’s the moral implication for not closing an eye to the illegal actions of lobbies such as the hunting lobby and ignoring the rest of us. But there’s another, very pragmatic reason for politicians not to act so cravenly with respect to bully-boy lobby groups.
And that is that any form of implicit agreement or tolerance of such groups tends to backfire, leaving the politicians looking like milksops and totally out of control. The violent incidents at the hunters’ protest and at Buskett last week have borne this out. This is why the government has finally been moved to act to suspend the autumn hunting season temporarily.
The Labour government is being humiliated and punished for its favourable treatment of the hunting lobby
It is no longer about hunting. It is only marginally about attempting to maintain the rule of law. It is now about desperately trying to avoid loss of face. I suspect that the latter reason counts more than the former.
The numerous breaches of hunting laws and regulations are a two-fingered salute to the government and the forces of law and order.
Whether the culprits are few or many is irrelevant at this point. The extent of the law-breaking is so in your face that it cannot be ignored.
The Labour government is being humiliated and punished for its favourable treatment of the hunting lobby. Actually, not just closing an eye to the occasional wounded swan but a fully-fledged defence of hunting.
A few months ago, Roderick Galdes, the Parliamentary Secretary for Animal Rights, took some time off from busying himself with pet cemeteries and regaled us with an article about what he termed “myths about hunting”.
On reading it, my impression was that Galdes was far more comfortable with dead animals (hence the obsession with the pet cemetery) and very annoyed at bird lovers and the press for making an untoward fuss over the “truly isolated” incidents of illegal shooting (his words, not mine).
Galdes signed off by taking aim at what he considers to be the root cause of the problem – the NGOs. Our animal rights champion declared: “If only a fraction of the energy spent by the NGOs on sensationalist campaigning, whatever the cause, were to be channelled into real conservation on the ground, the problem of illegal targeting of protected birds would have already been fully consigned to history.”
Well, we now see what that curious distortion of reality has got Galdes and his government – to a situation where hunters take to the streets threatening them and invading Buskett, hurling rocks in the direction of children.
It’s not only wrong, it has made the government and the police look ridiculous.
We are now a country where dancing in a bikini will have you being arrested on the spot whereas rock-throwing at Buskett requires prolonged investigation.
There’s a lesson to be learnt from all this. It is equally applicable to the Labour and Nationalist Party.
Stop hemming and hawing and coming up with all sorts of excuses for not doing the right thing and telling these law-breakers where to get off.
Further complicity with them and other similar groups will only boomerang on you and diminish you in the eyes of the public.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt