When I was Beck, which I keep saying in order to remind you that I was Beck, I would sometimes shoot my mouth off without stopping to think.
I still do.
My knee-jerk reaction to Simon Busuttil’s statement that the political parties should keep their noses out of the spring hunting debate was to raise my eyes heavenwards with a “Oh flipping hell, PN ducking out again...” grimace. On reflection, I was not quite right to adopt this sanctimonious position, as I shall seek to explain.
Others were also quick to exhort the PN to get off the fence, grow a spine and take a stand, ranging from Joseph Muscat, of whose motives more in a moment, through a number of common-or-garden citizens, to the august and stern movers and shakers of the Alternattiva Demokratika, hoping, as always, to ride on the coat-tails of the dissatisfied and grumpy PN voters who can’t bring themselves to vote Labour and lure them into the welcoming arms of Arnold Cassola and his noble brothers and sisters.
Not that there were many who took that bait a year and a bit ago, truth be told.
I’m hopeful, at this point in time, that the referendum will allow the goodguys to prevail
Leave aside the citizenry at large: their will, collectively expressed, is supreme and it’s useless to try to argue with each of them individually. AD, too, can be left aside: their position on hunting is well known, and one I fully support, but that’s as far as their relevance goes if push comes to shove in the way it might very well do if Muscat’s cunning plan comes to fruition.
So, what’s this about Muscat getting all sniffy about the PN not wanting to take a stand on spring hunting? The PM, bless his little cotton socks, is feeling all warm and chuffed about “his” victory over civil unions and same-sex adoptions and he dearly wants another issue over which to vanquish his nemesis, the Leader of the Opposition.
Bear in mind that the only reason that Muscat came out apparently (but only apparently) smelling of roses over the civil union/same-sex adoption thing, of course, was that the PN has to face a perfect storm of cosmic proportions every time the public needs to be made aware of something.
It’s become axiomatic that the media and the chattering classes hold the PN to a way higher standard than they hold Muscat’s bunch, so when the PN make the perfectly valid point that civil union is one thing and same-sex adoption entirely something else, no-one listens, because the PN are saying it and there’s an end to it.
The fact that the Opposition agreed, without reservation, to amend the Constitution, a vastly more important law than that to which Muscat tied his garish colours, was lost completely in the marketing blitz fomented by the government and its Bestest Best Friends.
With this in mind, consider that the spring hunting debate is heading that way as well, with the added twist that it’s becoming clearer by the minute that Muscat wants to find a way to keep the bird-killers happy. He’s twigged that stopping the referendum would be a bridge too far, but consider this quote, from Times of Malta a few days ago.
“Asked whether his government was considering changing the law as demanded by hunters, Dr Muscat was vague, saying he would wait for the petition and insisting spring hunting must continue to be practised irrespective of whether a referendum was held.”
This worries me: it sounds like a referendum will be held but, somehow, Muscat will manage to keep the hunters sweet.
Now, one way of doing this would be to have the referendum defeated and, no shinola Sherlock, given the election results and the sheer impossibility of reversing those numbers in just over a year, what better way of doing this than turning the debate into a Labour/PN contest?
If the PN falls for it and takes an anti-hunting stand, that’s exactly what will happen and the referendum will be lost, which is why the people who count, the ones who are actually working for spring hunting to be abolished, would rather like it if the politicians did, in fact, keep away, now that “we the people” are going to be called on to decide the question.
Consequently, yes, it would be nice, in an ideal world, if the moral high ground could be taken every time, but in the harsh reality of our political climate, the only way spring hunting will be driven underground (to take the Federated Bird Conservers at their own ludicrous word) is for the referendum to be won, and it very likely won’t be if Muscat rallies his soldiers of steel to the cause.
I’m hopeful, at this point in time, that the referendum will allow the people in white hats (that’s us, folks, the good guys) to prevail. The sight of barely coherent thugs raving, ranting and spluttering about being ‘provocated’ and the thinly-veiled threats directed towards anyone who, coincidentally, isn’t pro-hunting, should be enough in themselves, but when you add to the mix the perceived obfuscation of the government’s real stand on hunting, there’s no option but to got for a Ban It Vote, pure and simple.
And if you needed any further convincing, just take note of the Federation of Assorted Bird Killers’ latest dictum: if spring hunting is banned, it will just go underground. When you stop rolling around on the floor laughing at the idea of hunters in caves trying to blast bats into the next life, consider the point that plenty of what many hunters already get up to is illegal, so nothing much will change.
On a different note, where do the police get off, stopping what seems to have been a peaceful demonstration on the terraces during a football match?
I’m not particularly enamoured of the Palestinian cause, perhaps because I happen to think that there’s too much baggage still being humped by that side of the equation, but its proponents have every right to make their point, with banners or however else they like, as long as they don’t break the law.
It was reported, however, that the police ordered demonstrators who unfurled a banner critical of Israel during a soccer match to take it down and, again as reported, arrested someone involved.
The arrest might very well have been justified, though I suspect it was more likely the result of reluctance, vociferously expressed perhaps, to follow an order to cease and desist, a heinous crime that the police love to prosecute, because it’s so easy to do so.
This country, it might be worth reminding the cops, holds dear to its heart a number of rights, one of which is the right to freedom of expression. The right of your common or garden rozzer to order people about, dear to his own heart as it may be, does not on the other hand trump our more fundamental rights.
And the fact, sad as it is, that as may be gleaned from the comments, the cops’ efforts to stop the demonstration met with the approval of sundry insular and bigoted racists, does not add an iota of legitimacy to their antics.
Quite the contrary, in fact.
imbocca@gmail.com
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20