I ,for one, am not impressed by Premier Joseph Muscat’s little tweet. I’m not talking about the one where he made it known to all of his puny subjects that Europe, nay the world, is impressed with Malta and its stance on the tragedy unfolding in the Mediterranean.
No, insofar as concerns that particular bit of spin for the benefit of the Great Unwashed (spin drying, maybe?) let’s just draw a veil over it, lest we embarrass ourselves further by association with such small-minded self-praise.
What I’m even less impressed with, if that’s at all possible, is Premier Muscat’s closure of the spring hunting season a whole three, yes, that’s right, three, days early. This was a measure that was announced by means of a tweet while the Great Man was off on his jolly to one of the assorted havens of human rights and democracy with which he seems so enamoured, for reasons about which he hasn’t deigned to tweet to us.
Having done his little (British understatement, for the less perceptive) bit to make sure that the Ban Spring Hunting Referendum foundered, Premier Muscat found himself in the unfamiliar position, for him, that the electorate almost, but not quite, had given him a poke in the eye with a big stick. Were it not for Premier Muscat’s judicious fillip, the “No” vote would have carried the day and as it turned out, even the Great Man’s shoulder to the wheel was almost, but not quite, insufficient unto the day.
Truth be told, this is not the first referendum where things didn’t go entirely his way: back when he was a Super One hack, pedalling at a mighty rate with his little legs to the wheel to keep us out of the European Union (what price his passports today had that cunning little plan worked?) he and his boss at the time, Remember ‘Im Doctor Alfred Sant, had had a couple of fingers extended their way, Nanna Olga gambits and all.
This time around, the camp that needed Premier Muscat’s not inconsiderable influence scraped through, much to the dismay of almost half the country, that half that contains a goodly bunch of folk that thinks that the environment is not something for Sandro Chetcuti’s poor misinterpreted lobby to have their wanton way with and stick blocks of flats up all over the island.
As soon as the referendum result became known, Premier Muscat went into recovery mode. He reversed his pedalling direction with such alacrity that he almost gave himself the same sort of whiplash his good buddy John Dalli must have felt on the runway in the Bahamas or wherever it was that the latter gent took himself off to for what must have been the briefest transatlantic holiday in history.
Appearing solemn and statesmanlike before the nation in the evening on the Sunday after the referendum, almost as if he was about to declare the arrival of aliens and the end of world order as we knew it, Premier Muscat bowed down before the will of the electorate, not having influenced it all (British sarcasm, for those who don’t possess his sense of humour) and started frantically trying to drag the environmentalists back onside.
“This is your last chance” he told the bird-killers sternly, labouring under the impression that any were actually listening to him, given that they were out car-cading in their camos and waving bits of trees, somewhat weirdly.
Virtually no sooner had the ink dried on the newspapers’ reportage of Premier Muscat’s dire warning and sop to the green lobby that the shooting started again and protected species benefited (again, British humour, for those who don’t spot it) from the comforting arm draped over their feathery shoulders by our intrepid leader.
‘This is your last chance,’ he told the bird killers sternly, labouring under the impression that any were actually listening to him
A cuckoo or two, a slapped Dutch schoolboy and a couple of other minor infractions didn’t faze anyone, because they weren’t “flagrant breaches” of the law, a qualification on Premier Muscat’s “last chance” that had to have been in the very, very small print of his speech, such that we didn’t get to see that bit on the Monday after the Sunday before.
The bird-killers’ real spokesmen, judiciously kept from public view during the latter part of the referendum campaign lest they undo all the good work being done by Premier Muscat, made sure that they upped the ante by spreading as much healing ointment on the very fresh wounds of the anti-hunting crowd.
“These were criminals for whom we hold no brief” they intoned, while making it very clear to anyone who mattered, including Premier Muscat, that they would not take kindly at all to the hunting season being curtailed.
“The people have spoken”, they went on, apparently oblivious to the fact that it was just a little whisper, in the context and “woe betide you if you deny the will of the people”. “Oh” went on the bird-killers “and now the police should prosecute Birdlife for having a protected bird in their possession”, just to make sure that the over-riding feeling in their regard was contempt, at least on the part of those of us for whom owning a brain means we should use it.
As luck would have it, Premier Muscat was presented with a golden opportunity to rehabilitate himself with a significant chunk of the electorate that had contributed to his stonking victory a couple of years ago. A miscreant “who is not even a member” of the Federation of Conservationist Anti-Conservationists shot a kestrel, which even I can see is not a quail or turtle-dove, from right next to a school, causing it to fall to ground in the midst of a bunch of little children.
Premier Muscat, to the breathlessly adoring ululations of the terminally naive, immediately took stock, did his electoral sums, considered his plunging numbers as confirmed by the local councils vote and grasped his phone in Uberistikanitan or wherever he was.
“Let there be no more Spring hunting” he decreed in tweet form, perhaps constrained by the 140-character limit from adding “for this year, anyway”, stopping the bird-killers in their bloody tracks three whole days before they were supposed to stop anyway.
I bet the gentlemen of the shires who had booked a couple of days off to practise their noble art, Barbour jackets and Purdy Over’n’Unders an’all at the ready, were mightily displeased, poor fools.
Naturally, this led to a chorus of howls from the bird killers’ apologists, who appear to have failed to grasp the warning that Premier Muscat had decided to solemnly give when he started backtracking on that same Sunday evening while they were out celebrating.
The Federation of Bird-Killing Conservationists, unrepentant to the end, are even, as I write, considering a legal class-action to bring the majesty of the law down on the head of Premier Muscat for daring to gainsay them. Their position seems to be that “You can’t punish the majority for the minor misdemeanours of a handful of criminals”.
They seem oblivious to the minor facts a) that Premier Muscat can do that little thing (if he deems it convenient) b) that Premier Muscat did do that little thing (because he deemed it convenient) and c) that they should, when so deep in a hole, stop digging, because all they’re doing is making us laugh at them.
As my opening line says, I’m not impressed at all by Premier Muscat’s little stunt: he had no choice. He had no choice not because his conscience dictated this to him: his conscience should have kept him from politicising the whole thing in the first place, but the pre-electoral landscape was it was.
He had no choice because he is unparalleled in reading the runes and interpreting the tea-leaves and when your every move is dictated by these arcane symbols, you act as Premier Muscat does, with an eye to the main chance and nothing else.
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