Until not too long ago, I was the hunting lobby’s dream voter. I enjoy pausing for a few minutes just to listen to the birds singing in my garden. I can sit down on a stone step and stare, mesmerised, at a resting bird, no matter how commonplace and dowdy; I count the blinks of its beady eye, watch its breast fall and rise and go back inside as quietly as possible.

For all that, I prefer to live in a society that permits bird hunting than in one that does not. And I used to be prepared to defend the law now in place, which allows the authorities to decide to open a spring hunting season under certain conditions, as a balanced law.

It’s as possible to romanticise hunting and killing animals as it is to romanticise nature. I believe I do neither. I’ve lived and worked in more than one kind of real wilderness, where nature is a life-threatening adversary, and have had close brushes with dangerous animals. I’ve also seen animals die slowly, lying on their side, slaughtered, their eyes turning blue as the life trickled out of them. To me, next to all this, hunting in Malta looks like grownups playing in Toyland.

Nevertheless, I used to be able to come up with half a dozen reasons why the hunting law should remain as it is, with government authorities retaining some discretion in whether the spring hunting season should be opened or not.

First, I believe in real pluralism – a society that permits the pursuit of very different ends as long as no rights are violated. Just because killing birds repulses me is, on its own, not enough of a reason to stop others from doing it.

Moreover, while hunters have been harshly criticised, in some quarters, for threatening political parties with their vote, I see nothing wrong with that. That’s how lobbies behave in our system. Why pick on hunters when the private sector, unions and environmentalists do the same?

Second, I could see that while hunting is meaningless to me, it doesn’t mean it’s absolutely meaningless, period. It’s meaningful enough for many hunters to have organised even their working lives – the choices they’ve made – to be able to take time off to hunt, including in spring.

For many hunters, it’s not just about them and the birds. It’s about the company they keep. Hunting is embedded in a lifetime of stories, including those of growing up, of being initiated into the hunt as part of the other benchmarks of burgeoning manhood, such as the first cigarette offered to you by an adult.

Third, while many hunters felt that demonstrating manhood included utter contempt for the law, and a readiness to threaten violence on anyone who wished to stop them breaking it, it was plainly unjust to punish all hunters for the misbehaviour (in some cases, criminal behaviour) of some.

Fourth, the burden of upholding the law rested on the shoulders of the authorities. The law, properly upheld, has sustainability inbuilt. And it is possible to have a good infrastructure of checks and balances.

If the Yes vote prevails, politicians will draw the obvious conclusion that you can play people for utter fools and win

Finally, there came what was for me the most important reason. I think that the referendum on EU membership, 12 years ago, would have been a much more closely run thing without a Yes vote by a segment of hunters and their families. They voted Yes because they were promised that the national government would retain some discretion on the opening of the spring hunting season.

I think this was a pact that bound all pro-EU voters. I detest the idea that a pact can be cherry-picked after the majority acquires what it wants. I also think it’s blinkered; broad coalitions will be difficult to put together if it’s understood that pacts are short-lived.

Given all this, why am I voting No on Saturday? In brief, because the reasons I just gave are only reasonable if there is good faith all round. But there isn’t.

The authorities are in bad faith.

In various documented ways, the government has weakened enforcement and monitoring mechanisms.

Joseph Muscat has said that the law would come down heavily on any abuse by hunters. But his government has only made things easier for the hunters so far.

The suspension of the autumn season does not contradict that. All the circumstantial evidence points to the suspension as dictated by the need to give Karmenu Vella an easier passage to having his nomination as environment commissioner approved by the European Parliament.

In this campaign, Muscat has lobbied for the hunters. The latter’s campaign bears many traces of Labour help. The government is a crony of the hunters, not a friend of the law.

The hunters’ lobby is in bad faith, too.

The official representatives of the vast majority of hunters have repeatedly demonstrated scant respect for accountability and the law. It has culminated with this campaign, where illegal billboards were used by the hunting lobby to put across its message.

How can I be expected to trust the message of respect for the law if that message was put across illegally?

Finally, the EU pact, which I put so much store by, has been torn up by others. I wanted Malta to join the EU to have an adult politics. In this campaign, voters have been treated like fools: the hunting lobby has been visually represented by people and icons that have nothing to do with them; the gimmicks have been ridiculous even by our laughable standards.

If the hunting lobby wins the campaign, it’s not just the rest of environmental issues that will suffer. It will be our entire politics. The politicians will watch and draw the obvious conclusion that you can play people for utter fools and win.

ranierfsadni@europe.com