Hunting has flown beyond the parties’ reach

I have to admit I have changed my opinion on at least one aspect of the spring hunting issue. I used to think political parties were somehow ‘indebted’ to the electorate to take up clear policy positions on all matters of public concern. In fact, I used to think this was part of their entire raison d’etre. 

After all, these parties intend to represent us in parliament, and to legislate in our collective names. The least they could do, therefore, is give us an indication of what they actually think about issues that are of concern to others.

Well, hunting has always been an issue for me personally – I was (briefly) a committee member of the youth section of BirdLife when it was still called ‘MOSY’ (why, oh why, did they ever change the name? It was exactly how we all felt during those 5am bird-ringing sessions in bedewed Gozo valleys… ‘mossy’). So it never struck me as unreasonable to expect the party I voted for to at least occasionally pretend to share my concern. 

And how could they not, anyway? All those cute fluffy little birds, singing happily away in full-throated ease, when… BA-BLAM! Smouldering hot lead pellets come searing into their bodies, shattering bones and severing flight muscles, and down they tumble in an untidy heap of blood and feathers. How could anyone witness that calamity, and not be moved with indignation to clamour for swift judgment to overtake the perpetrators, etc.?

That, at any rate, was how I used to see things back then. I was also reading a lot of stuff like Ivanhoe: “Chivalry! Why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection…the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant…!” 

So perhaps my expectations of political parties were just slightly unrealistic back then.

Even so, there were other, less romantic but equally valid political reasons to get involved. It always struck me as incongruous that any political party would simply disregard an issue that many people (myself included) felt strongly enough about to base their vote upon. Why should I vote for a party, anyway, if it doesn’t even want to represent my views in parliament? And isn’t that the whole point of an election to begin with?

But that was all in the years before either party ever so much as squeaked a word about hunting, let alone fought pitched battles over it at every election. Things would change very quickly, and the turning point came in the early 1990s: when someone must have pointed out to Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami that his dream of joining the EU might hit a snag, if he didn’t do something about Malta’s very lax hunting regulations. 

It fell to a lone MP named Stanley Zammit to draw up the necessary regulations to bring us in line with the European Birds Directive… what followed were mass protests, random acts of vandalism, and the sheepish withdrawal of Zammit’s proposed law: along with Zammit himself, who was reassigned and (practically) never heard of again.

Then came the 1996 election, ahead of which Labour leader Alfred Sant and Foreign Minister George Vella signed a treaty with the hunters’ federation to guarantee that a future Labour government ‘would not legislate in a such a way as to piss off any hunter, great or small’ (or words to that approximate effect). And that more or less set the tone for every election ever since. In ’98 Fenech Adami signed an identical treaty… only the wording this time was: ‘anything they can offer you, we can do better’ (it even came with a free karaoke DVD).

In fact, just about everything that happened in connection with hunting in the last 20 years – the case against Malta in the European Court, the abrupt closure of spring hunting (and ensuing mayhem) in 2008… and again in 2014… – it all goes back to that pivotal moment of realisation, at some point around 1993 or 1994, that this issue they had both ignored for so long had the power to make or break governments, and possibly even to destabilise the country. (I was present in Valletta during the 2008 protest, and trust me, it came close).

And when both parties did come round to ‘taking up a position’ on hunting, the positions they took were never dictated by any real concern with the issue itself, or even with the immediate necessity of committing to policy direction. I used to think the primary concern was votes… and of course, it was, in the beginning. But I now I realise there was all along something deeper and darker (almost tragic, in fact) lurking beneath the surface. 

Let’s face it: both Labour and the PN would have carried on ignoring the issue indefinitely… until it got in the way of their own carefully laid plans for this country, and forced them to pay attention. Fenech Adami needed the hunters to get into Europe; Sant needed them to get into government. Both were pressing, do-or-die issues at the time, and both Labour and PN were willing to gamble on an alliance regardless of any future price to pay. 

And both have paid a price. If neither party to date has been able to veer from its shared ‘yes to spring hunting’ policy, it is not because this policy has been particularly successful… but more because they are trapped by their own political promises, and cannot now wriggle out. They have to keep repeating the same old arguments, whether or not they ever manage to win over the votes they once hoped to attract. In the case of the PN, it is now safe to say that those votes have been irretrievably lost. Few can deny that the deal has in fact worked out far better for Labour than for the PN – but that is mainly because Labour spent all except four of the past 25 years in Opposition. 

Being in government – and therefore expected to deliver – the Nationalists quickly discovered that certain promises (especially the one that said ‘things would not change for the hunters AT ALL’) were impossible to keep. By the time Gonzi was forced to close the spring season in 2008, the hunters had not only crossed the Rubicon, but were already marching on the Palace. Nor have they forgotten that it was Simon Busuttil who had first given them all those ill-fated assurances, in the days when he was still the public face of MiC.

But while Labour clearly benefited from the situation in both 1996 and 2013, the situation is less rosy now. After the 2014 spring season fiasco, and now the final approval of a referendum for next April – which many hunters feel Joseph Muscat ‘did not oppose strongly enough’ (whether he could have done anything about it is a question that doesn’t seem to have occurred to them) – Muscat is likewise finding out that meeting hunters’ expectations is a whole lot easier before an election, than afterwards. 

Looking back on all this now, I can only conclude that I was wrong all those years ago to insist on political parties pronouncing themselves on things like hunting. Much better for all concerned – most of all, for the parties themselves – to just keep quiet about it. In fact, it is precisely because they took up positions in the first place that the situation has become so politically impossible that we were forced to resort to a referendum. 

And this puts a whole different perspective on things. Who cares what the two parties now say, anyway? The matter is going to be decided one way or another, regardless of their own opinions in the matter. Suddenly, it is no longer a case of hunting getting in the way of politics; but politicians interrupting a discussion that is getting along just fine without them.

In a sense, this makes this referendum a great leveller in our current political landscape. It has already cut both party leaders down to size: reminding them that there are other means available to get things done, when the two parties have reached a mutually comfortable arrangement not to rock the boat too much. It has, in a word, short-circuited a system that had previously responded only to the control of governments. We can now see with our eyes that there are areas beyond which governments cannot reach. And there is an irony in this realisation, too.

Part of the reason so many of us had voted Yes to EU accession in 2003 was precisely to reach a point of political maturity whereby local politics would no longer be the be all and end all of everything. There would be further recourse to action where local channels fail, or when local governance fails to meet community standards. 

This argument had particular relevance to the hunting issue. With a bit of dedicated lobbying, any special interest group can exert enough influence over a local government to eventually get its way. Just look at Armier. For reasons outlined above, it was always too easy for the hunters to have both parties singing the same tune from a little cage on their trophy shelf. But to twist the European Commission’s arm the same way? That seemed unlikely before 2003. 

Hence the irony. It proved a whole lot easier than predicted to twist the Commission’s arm. Its infringement procedures in 2008 did not stop spring hunting; and following a disputed ECJ verdict it seemed to lose interest altogether. Now, finally, this referendum brings the issue to a head, and forces a decision to be taken once and for all… and oh look: neither the European Union nor the local political establishment was in any way involved.

Indeed, the latter was all along opposed to holding a referendum: both Muscat and Busuttil are on record stating that they disagreed. This last detail alone speaks volumes about the predicament both parties now find themselves in, as a result of their own reluctance to ever take decisive action before.

Both seem to project visible discomfort with one of the most basic tools of democracy: arguing that the matter ‘should not be decided by a referendum’, but by an election… as though a simple choice of ‘us’ or ‘them’ is enough to instantly resolve all disputes. More to the point: both party leaders disagree with this referendum, even though the referendum has in itself been brought about precisely by their agreement over this one issue. Had both pro- and anti-views been represented in the electoral debates of the past 25 years, one side would already have prevailed by now. The election would indeed have settled the matter, and today’s referendum would be pointless. 

As things stand, however, it serves an altogether more meaningful point than anything related to birds or guns. It also pinpoints the precise area at which Malta’s two-party system breaks down altogether, and proves itself powerless at every level – powerless to fulfil its electoral promises, powerless to prevent an unwanted referendum, powerless to halt a haemorrhage of hunter’s’ votes, powerless to take any decision to satisfactorily settle the matter in over 25 years – while the real power is now being wielded by the electorate: i.e., precisely how the same system was all along supposed to work all along.

It is not just the hunting issue that has flown beyond the reach of Maltese politics. With it has flown also the illusion of political power.