Anyone naïve enough to believe that politics could be kept out of the spring hunting issue must have received a cold shower last week. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat gracelessly waded into the debate in favour of Labour’s allies, the hunters.

He had promised to stay out of the controversy, but there is no way Muscat can be expected to keep his word, and that’s without mentioning power stations.

Labour’s electoral programme had promised that his government would guarantee spring hunting. Faced with a referendum on exactly that, and the prospect of finding himself on the wrong side of history in the eyes of some, Muscat gave his parliamentary group a free vote, in clear breach of their electoral mandate.

If that betrayal of the electorate were not enough, he broke his second promise too, and politicised the issue of spring hunting the moment he saw the tide turning against the hunters. Truly, we have never seen a more an unprincipled, wavering, populist politician in modern Maltese political history as Muscat.

The Prime Minister, who will never understand the middle class he likes to woo, thought he was taking a dig at Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil when he accused him of campaigning in favour of the No vote, despite his declared stance favouring spring hunting.

The reaction out there to Muscat’s accusation is the opposite of what he expects: 73 per cent of Nationalist voters hope what he said about Busuttil was true. They want hunting out.

Muscat is out of his depth here because he cannot understand that educated people will never accept hunting on principle. He thinks that everything is open to compromise, which is why his party is in such an ideological mess.

The average Nationalist voter, disappointed by Busuttil’s official stand on hunting, but aware of the realities of politics, hopes that Busuttil is doing exactly what Muscat claims: campaigning for the No vote. Muscat actually gives Nationalists hope.

The Prime Minister shamelessly threw his weight behind the hunters’ lobby the very morning that a Malta Today survey was showing that the No vote was seven points ahead.

It was a knee-jerk reaction on Muscat’s part, as most of his decisions are, except those involving spin.

A win for the No vote is Muscat’s biggest nightmare because he knows he will get the blame for the demise of spring hunting. He knows exactly how to read the thinking of his gullible, working class supporters. He knows how to please them and he also knows their limited understanding of democratic principles.

If spring hunting gets banned, he knows hunters will be out on the streets blaming him because it happened under his watch. Hunting is an immensely political issue and it could be the beginning of the undoing of that great swindle called Malta Tagħna Lkoll.

If the Yes vote wins and we’re also stuck with spring hunters, there is absolutely no stopping Muscat triumphing at the next general election. His secretive, degenerate, banana republic way of governing does not deserve a second term. But he will win the next election if the hunting lobby has its way.

A victory for hunters would prove that unholy, backroom alliances with a soulless Labour Party do pay off in the end. It is worth investing in Labour because they have taken prostitution to a higher plane.

If the hunters win, people with vested interests like them will be queuing up more than ever before to ally with Labour come the next election.

The votes and the money will pour in. This country will be ransacked and squeezed dry like a lemon by a Labour government that will continue to sell Malta to vested interest groups, from the Armier squatters to major project developers and to international investors from undemocratic states.

With Muscat throwing his full weight behind the hunters, we can be rest assured that his blind supporters will do his bidding and vote accordingly

Labour has become the antithesis of the common good and a parody of what it once stood for. Power has replaced principle and power, absolute power, is the recipe for corruption. Inversely, a win for the No vote would send a clear message that Labour’s backroom deals are a no-go. It should be remembered that a key factor leading to the referendum campaign was the fracas in our countryside that followed Labour’s 2013 electoral victory.

Hunters must have been promised a free hand under Labour; there is no other explanation for the celebratory massacre of birds in 2013.

The referendum campaign shows there is hope for this country, that there is a conscientious portion of the electorate that still believes in the common good and is willing to go the whole hog. This referendum has nothing to do with the shooting of quails or God knows what other bird most of us do not even recognise: this referendum is about decency, a choice between good and bad, a choice between the educated and the uneducated, between the middle class and the working class, between what Labour promised in its electoral programme and what it promised behind closed doors. Voting No is a political decision, as it should be.

There is no better issue than the environment to knock some sense into this government and most especially the Prime Minister. The environment is one of the few issues that appeal to people’s sense of altruism because the environment belongs to no one.

The Prime Minister, inversely, looks upon the environment as a tool to garner votes through favours. This is a battle of cultures.

True, last Sunday’s Malta Today survey showed Muscat leading by 15 per cent over Busuttil in the trust barometer. That does not reflect well on the electorate, most especially when those same surveys also show Muscat’s ratings as dipping fast among respondents with higher education.

Muscat appeals to the uneducated, the myopic, the selfish and yes, the envious. His predecessor Dom Mintoff did exactly that. That is why Muscat could tell his supporters with a straight face that they should vote Yes because “we, as Maltese, cannot be treated less equally than anyone else in the EU”.

It is Mintoff’s ‘us and them’ syndrome all over again and it will be a shame upon this country if the electorate were to fall for this nonsense. The spring hunting referendum is the result of the efforts of Maltese people with a civic sense.

Their grave mistake is that they did not go for the full abolition of hunting. That would have been a better rallying cry.

Claims of ‘foreign interference’ that cater to that colonial residue that has left Malta with a national inferiority complex, have always been staple Labour fodder. It works miracles among its uneducated supporters. That tactic very nearly kept Malta out of the EU, with Muscat leading the charge.

Labour and its hunter supporters exploit and scare their working class base. The hunters have scared the pyrotechnic community that they will be next. The SHout campaigners have tried to put hobby fishermen’s minds at rest that they too will not be next. Sadly, these people have votes too.

With Muscat throwing his full weight behind the hunters, we can be assured that his blind supporters, of which there are tragically many, will do his bidding and vote accordingly.

None of this bodes well, whatever the surveys may be saying.

Muscat cannot afford to lose the hunting referendum. A victory for the No vote, a victory for the common good, a victory for environmentalists, a victory for idealists will send shockwaves down Labour’s crooked spine.

The rejection of spring hunting by a conscientious moral majority would prove that Muscat’s unprincipled populist policies will lose in the end. A victory for the No vote would tell Muscat that his way of government, with his secret backroom dealings both locally and internationally, is not the right way to run the country.

This country does not need another Mintoff.

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