The government’s intention to decriminalise the ‘vilification’ of the Catholic religion has had mixed reactions. Apparently, vilification is not insulting or offending, which is fine, but more like ‘debasing’ religion. The idea is that it is provocative and can lead to extreme reactions.

What does this law mean in practice? Six years ago, someone was given a suspended sentence for displaying some images of the Pope and naked women at a party. Compared to the images widely available on the internet, this seems ridiculously trivial. Dragging people through the anxiety of criminal court procedures is no joke.

Also that year, six young people dressed as nuns at the Nadur carnival in Gozo, wearing black dresses and veils were hauled to court for vilification of religion and for wearing ecclesiastical vestments. They were acquitted as the court ruled that, once their outfits did not include crosses, they were not sacred garments.

Ah, so that’s OK then. I can freely go around wearing a black habit and veil as long as I don’t wear a cross. Or is that only during carnival? Another reveller was not so lucky and was given a one-month jail term, suspended for 18 months, for dressing up as Jesus.

Now if that was not a waste of court time and resources, then I don’t know what is. Satire is the essence of carnival. Historically, it was the day when people could act, dress and behave in ways which are normally unacceptable.

Carnival humour is quite tame in Malta. For nearly 80 years, political satire was thought to be prohibited. The denouement of this urban myth occurred in 2012, when then culture minister Mario de Marco discovered that this legal prohibition was a fantasy. People had believed that a police notice of 1935 was still valid and banned all political satire during carnival. Yet, in reality the notice had only referred to foreign politics and was long obsolete.

In truth, the demand for political satire during carnival couldn’t have been strong, as then surely somebody would have tested the law over the years. On the contrary, nobody even detected that it did not exist. With hindsight, it is strange that people simply accepted an illusory ban on political satire on carnival floats, while enjoying it every day in the newspapers and on television.

Several prominent legal experts have expressed strong concerns about removing the vilification law, especially in relation to other laws and the Constitution. I hope that Justice Minister Owen Bonnici pays attention to their views. His advisers are pushing hard for the removal of the law, but may not have the same eye for legal fine-tuning.

We will have to wait and see how Joseph Muscat will slip through this one, and what nifty compromise will be proposed to defuse the controversy if a trapping season is opened

I am sceptical because, in recent changes to environmental laws, government advisers did not factor in the implications on other legal aspects. It was NGOs and the public who had to point this out to them. Perhaps the same is happening here. It seems reasonable to iron out any inconsistencies before ploughing ahead. This is hardly top urgent and there is time to get it right. In the meantime, the criminal prosecution of carnival trivia and artistic expression must stop.

• Our politicians are generally quite accepting of being satirised in cartoons. The CEO of the hunting association, Lino Farrugia, is not so relaxed and last year had sued Malta Today for libel over a cartoon depicting him as ‘caught with his pants down’ while a drone flew overhead. He could have just laughed and shrugged it off instead of taking this image of himself into the courtroom, where it will be recorded for ever more. With all the mud-slinging that surrounds hunting, he has surely experienced worse than that.

The autumn hunting season opened last Tuesday and plenty of gunshot lies ahead over the next five months. Birdlife has already issued a statement saying that they intend to pursue legal action against the government. The Wild Birds Regulation Unit, under parliamentary secretary Roderick Galdes in the Environment Ministry, has just amended the law to give itself greater powers, without any consultation. This sounds sadly familiar. Other environmental laws have recently also been passed without consultation.

Birdlife reminded us of all the hunting and trapping legislation which has been relaxed over the last two years, including decriminalising bird-callers, re-opening finch trapping, increasing trapping licences, easing hunting and trapping exams and reducing a curfew protecting birds of prey. It is now also possible to practise taxidermy without a licence.

The government is being warned by the European Commission, whose environmental office is now headed by our former tourism minister Karmenu Vella, that re-opening a trapping season this autumn may be in breach of EU legislation. Like spring hunting, trapping is prohibited and can only be allowed through a derogation.

Galdes has recently issued new licences to trappers, which must have led them to believe that the season will be opened regularly.

We will have to wait and see how Joseph Muscat will slip through this one, and what nifty compromise will be proposed to defuse the controversy if a trapping season is opened.

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