Just how deprived are we of grey matter?

One measures a country’s success not by its Gross Domestic Product and neither by the number of luxury cars and opulent homes it boasts. 

Rather, a nation and its people should be gauged by their cultural standing… in other words, their level of intelligence and their education. 

Apart from that, one should also take the country’s physical surroundings, and the quality of its environment, into account.

In this respect, these past few weeks reconfirmed my view that we are a far cry from being the sophisticated, educated and culturally gifted people we imagine ourselves to be. 

We are not alone in being mediocre. 

Many other nations have made similar lapses in judgement. France and Italy have elected two buffoons – Le Pen and Beppe Grillo – to represent them.

In Malta, we have been spared these oddballs, but we surely have our fair share of opportunistic and stupid politicians.

We also have political leaders who choose to embrace old traditions because of political expediency and refuse to engage in some controversial matters out of fear of losing political support… or simply because they suffer from political myopia.

Now, most will think that cultural deficit has nothing to do with the lack or the absence of appreciation for ecology. But the very fact that we live in a country whose inhabitants have no appreciation of history and who take its natural resources for granted – and assume them to be endless and ever-abundant – is a real issue.

I fail to understand why Prime Minister Joseph Muscat needs to suck up to trappers and hunters. 

If he were trailing behind in the polls, it would be understandable. 

I get the impression that Muscat remains largely indifferent to how to hunting issue pans out. Not so parliamentary secretary Michael Falzon, who is not only pro-hunting but pro-fireworks.

When Falzon met the Malta Developer’s Association the other day, he came close to hugging all of them, as if they were part of his extended family.

The big questions remains: is Falzon the right man to head planning and environment at MEPA? Back to Muscat. 

The PM continues to believe that every lobby should be catered for.

Therefore he was willing (gladly) to change the way Malta perceives gays and gender equality but then he wants us to accept that hunters hunt in spring and supposedly shoot for only two birds, when we all know that most hunters – despite what Lino Farrugia might say – have little respect for the law, and make it a point to kill anything that flies. 

Now, Muscat wants to go one step further: he wants to give useless frustrated men the chance to return to their trapping sites and trap finches. That is: to block paths in the countryside and to take over public land with their age-old nets and effectively ‘kill’ songbirds.

Mark Anthony Falzon – who writes in The Sunday Times and thinks of himself as some kind of intellectual – is the chairman of the Ornis committee that has allowed this to all happen.

He will probably argue that this is a socio-cultural tradition that needs to be preserved. Going by that logic, we should also seek to ‘preserve’ the age-old tradition of omertà when it came to child molestation or wife-beating, and the belief that all men who liked men or women who liked women were sick bastards.

The last thing we need is for anthropologists and sociologists to tell us how to live our lives. 

Muscat knows that he has no legal right to do what he is doing.

More so, when he knows that these decisions are not allowed by the Treaty and when he knows that the European Union is a complacent institution that takes ages to react.

And it gets worse. Muscat’s behaviour is bordering on extreme arrogance: a judicial protest against the opening of spring hunting by Birdlife Malta was not even replied to by the Attorney General, because as we all know, the Attorney Generals of this country are not independent, and always await for instructions.

The other day, parliamentary secretary Roderick Galdes – who created a Wild Bird Regulations Unit which may as well be called the ‘Unit Promoting Hunters and Trappers’ – argued that he has good enough reason to allow trapping to restart. I was always impressed by just how unimpressive Galdes really is… which suits him nicely in his role as a junior minister supposedly charged with safeguarding animal welfare… but who then opens up the door to more wanton destruction of wildlife.

In reality, the treaty of accession between Malta and the EU spells it out in black and white. Trapping ended in 2008, and this is made crystal clear because in 2008 only those who had trapped before 2002 could be given licences. And more importantly, Malta lost its chance then and cannot exempt itself once more.

I know these specific details not by chance but simply because I kick-started the Ornis committee and served as its chairman from 1999 until 2004. I also served, for my sins, as a consultant on the birds’ directive for Richard Cachia Caruana, and I know all too well that Muscat’s ‘green card’ to the trappers is an attempt to placate them because like his predecessor Gonzi, he made a promise… and because he thinks they equal automatic votes.

Muscat’s vision of modern Malta can be translated into a grubby man with a tacky blue t-shirt and baggy shorts with a cage tucked under an arm and a greenfinch hopping helplessly to and fro, in a confined space smaller than a shoebox. 

But Muscat has one defect (and it’s a very big one): he is adamant to placate all the lobbies that could create diversions and headaches for him.

In the meantime, Lino Farrugia and his band of trappers will return to the countryside to set up their clap nets and in the process, they will not make our natural environment better. They will make it worse.

To portray hunters and trappers as positive is simply wrong.

Hunters and trappers are a negative presence – no two ways about it. They destroy nature. Without them, we are far better.

They will contribute to all this by ridding it of birds and other flying creatures and then, they will destroy the garrigue and countryside to guarantee that their clap nets and decoys will enable them to catch as many finches as is possible.

Roderick Galdes, of course, can’t quite relate this with a problem. His stand on hunting and trapping has helped him since some in his constituency are not renowned for its poets or highly educated folk but rather for those who think that trapping and hunting is a folkloristic tradition, and consider all those who think otherwise as morons.

Just like village festas – which rock the night and frighten young children and elderly folk – are tolerated and promoted, our brand new political class think that preserving the traditions of troglodytes is a progressive matter.

It is as progressive as eulogising a convicted politician (Cyrus Engerer) and allowing him to continue with his government employment simply because he was a candidate – when other civil servants with the same conviction are banned from government employment.

The worst offence Muscat could commit, would be to genuflect to the hunters and insist that the referendum on spring hunting is held as a stand alone and not with the local councils. In my eyes, that would be criminal.

And the only reason that Joe Perici Calascione has asked for this to happen is because he does not want the majority to exercise their democratic right.

This country is under the impression that it has evolved and moved on since the bad old days. But really, if you dig deeper, you will realise that beyond the cute cars, better wines, bloody smart tablets and technology, our cultural standing and appreciation is as bland and insipid as that of our forefathers.