Last call, Vote NO!

Next week, the outcome of the referendum to ban spring hunting will be known to everyone.  

The campaign has brought back many fond memories for me, including the numerous political campaigns held over three decades and the last two referenda campaigns.   

Then like now I immersed myself in the campaign to fight for a cause that I thought was just.  More than just.

My first referendum was for European Union accession and the last was for the introduction of divorce.  

In the first referendum on the European Union issue, Labour party leader Alfred Sant declared that he would not respect the outcome of the result.  

In the second referendum, the political parties took no official stand, but Muscat said he was in favour and Gonzi said he was against.

In both referenda common sense prevailed and we moved forward and not backwards. But in both cases it was the people who decided, not the political parties.

There was cross-party voting.

And in this referendum the same will happen. Big time.  

But everything is possible.  Even though the polls are showing the NO vote with a seven-point lead.

This campaign has been different from the others because both political party leaders have decided to say yes to spring hunting.  Even though we all know that many party faithful will be voting according to their conscience.

To be fair to Muscat and Busuttil, both leaders have expressed the view that voters and parliamentarians are free to vote according to their belief.

Several politicians have asked me why I feel so strongly about hunting.  I think that the answer to that is the nostalgia of having spent so much time roaming the Maltese and Gozitan countryside.  And watching birds being gunned down.

I have to say that I am in awe at the beauty of some of the Maltese and Gozitan countryside, most especially the shoreline and coastal areas. 

In those years I saw with my very eyes the thuggery and utter cruelty of the hunters.

Men who simply loved to kill, for the fun of it.  

It is anathema to today’s culture and mood.

Trigger-happy and cruel, there are no better words to describe it.

As a young adult I spent hours discovering lush coastal valleys and splendid locations which I never imagined existed on our Islands.

I was also surprised at how few people appreciated our surroundings.  But that was in the late seventies. Today it is a different story.

Since the late seventies both Islands have been transformed by shocking development that has led to a diminished countryside and more pressure on our wildlife.

Since then many more people believe that this country is too beautiful and restricted to be left to the fate of a small group of men who claim that their tradition is supreme and that they eclipse all the arguments we bring forward.

Spring hunting, they say, will mean the end of other hobbies. That of course has been one of the main arguments of the hunters’ lobby.  It is of course because hunters imagine that there are other hobbies which are as harmful as theirs.  

The truth is that after this campaign most of the activists in this campaign will go back to doing what they are supposed to be doing.

In my case it will be journalism.

Most of us will rejoice at this victory, but really and truly it will be a message for all those who consider environmentalism as second division to rethink their priorities.

It will also mean that people will exercise a right given when they were empowered to take their own decision without the blessing of politicians and the political parties.

We have come a long way.

If this referendum is won, and I believe it will be, it will be thanks to the many years BirdLife Malta spent educating young schoolchildren about environmental values. Today there are at least two generations of Maltese and Gozitans who have grown to appreciate the reasons for conservation.

It goes beyond the argument of sustainability, that buzz word now so often wrongly used to justify the most ill-advised decisions.

It makes it incumbent upon us that, just as we are accepting the great changes in gender equality, we should strive to reach the stage when environmentalism becomes an ingrained and accepted benefit rather than a fleeting thought.

And as I was going to end this opinion and call on everyone who is reading this to get out and vote, I recall Joe Perici Calascione’s last diatribe about his reality check with life and death.

He said that everyone and everything dies.

Which of course was his justification for taking his shotgun and blasting birds out of the skies.

I will of course leave the choice of adjectives to others to describe Perici Calascione’s incredible silliness.

The other utter insane comment was Perici Calascione’s comment that they would question the decision of the referendum in a court of law.

I wonder what Kathleen Grima would say to this.

Does she have a reasoned legal opinion about this?

I would have loved to end this opinion here but I could not help noticing that  the government-appointed Ornis committee chairman this week wrote down in an email that a protected bird – a Grey Heron – had been shot and killed.  Mark Anthony Falzon is the man who chairs the Ornis committee, the committee that has waved the green flag for opening the spring hunting season if the referendum is won by the hunters.

Falzon, an anthropologist by profession and very opinionated opinion writer in The Sunday Times, is an active birdwatcher but he has stood his ground in the Ornis committee, arguing sometimes at a tangent to what is expected from someone who knows what happens in the Maltese countryside.

He has tried very hard to give a human face to the hunters that shoot and kill, that reduce to a jumble of bloodied feathers the beautiful creatures which grace our skies.  

It is about time Falzon realises that the hunters may be human, indeed nice guys, but when presented with a shotgun in their hand they get it all monumentally wrong.

Banning spring hunting will save them from breaking the law and shooting down everything that flies.