Like my friend and colleague Jean Karl Soler (April 4), I am not a hunter and am personally against the killing of animals for sport. I feel I must thank my fellow Maltese who took the initiative to enable the voting Maltese public to participate in the democratic exercise of expressing themselves in favour or against spring hunting.

I believe it is dangerous to obfuscate this fact by hinting that this initiative might create some sort of precedent in effectively overruling a judgment by an international court of law.

The questions that the people have to answer and which are implicit in the spring hunting referendum question are:

Does spring hunting hinder or help the propagation of bird species involved in migration?

Does spring hunting hinder or help the enjoyment of the countryside by all and sundry?

Yes, these are the implicit ‘populist’ questions being asked and they will be answered by the people in the upcoming referendum.