Hunters need to grow up and stop attempting to blackmail everybody with their vote. We all know they are a minority, just as people whose sport is swimming, golf, football, shot-putting, archery, scrabble - you name it, are sports practised by a small number of people. The practitioners of each sport put together might make up a nation, but individually, they are a minority. We all have our little grievances and our angry stories to tell. If we were all to decide the future of our country based on those grievances, we might as well save the national economy the expense of going to the polls and have alternating parties govern every five years. How petty of the hunters and all those others who indulge in it, to attempt to get what they want by blackmail.
Anyway, of all those who say they will not be voting for the party in government, we can always dismiss half as not ever having voted for it because they always vote for some other party. They're just attempting to use the threat of their votes as leverage to get what they want. They are not blackmailing a political party: They are blackmailing a nation. When we vote, we should be voting on the big issues - on our quality of life; on our newly-acquired standing on the international and European scene; on the advances in our economic status and our ability to attract foreign investment.
Hunters, however, seem to think that their "sport" is on the same level of such issues. They've now added the epithet "traditional" to the misnomer "sport", thinking to fool those of us who are not fooled by the noun "Conservationists" added to their club title. A sport is a game in which contestants have an equal chance of winning. Hunters are so used to always being the winners against unarmed birds that they can't stomach not getting their way when they have to compete with creatures their own size.
Most of us - Maltese and non - are not only against a "sport" which involves the taking of God-given life, but also feel that the hunters are taking something from nature which is not theirs to take. What makes them think they have the right to kill capriciously? Why should they arrogate to themselves the right to deprive us of the pleasure of being able to enjoy live birds of whichever species pass through our skies? Besides, birds are nobody's property - they are international. The need to protect them is international too. Why should hunters, of whatever nationality, appropriate them?
Just grow up and stop whining about your aggressive, thieving pastime, will you all?