Trapped… on bird trapping

There was an iconic moment towards the end of the ill-fated Sex Pistols tour of the USA – the last concert at Winterland in 1978, to be precise – when John Lydon’s voice could be heard above the incessant booing: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

Years later, the former Pistol frontman would expand on that sentiment in an interview: “…I felt I had been personally cheated, and the band too, and the audience! By – from my point of view – the jealous shenanigans of bad management. We were allowed to resent each other, and left up to our own devices, which unfortunately turned to spite. But we were young, and too young for the adults all around us who, while we were not looking, put themselves in the driving seats…”

I’ll concede that the artist formerly known as ‘Johnny Rotten’ might be an unusual source of potted wisdom. But wisdom, like courage, can be found in unlikely places. And to date, the sheer perspicacity of both those statements – not to mention their uncanny applicability to Malta in the 21st century – has consistently amazed me.

Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? I get it all the time. And for the same reasons so eloquently outlined above, too. “The jealous shenanigans of bad management’… Oh, how neatly that description fits the ongoing charade, performed daily by a posse of actors who have installed themselves in the driver’s seat while the rest of us weren’t looking... 

And how accurately, too, Rotten’s onstage complaint sums up that feeling of helplessness, as competing sets of would-be ‘managers’ offer nothing but the same old failed policies… leaving us with no choice whatsoever, other than the occasional opportunity to select whom we’d rather be cheated by.

Any number of examples could illustrate this unholy state of affairs… but the one that cropped up this week couldn’t be more appropriate. It deals with roughly the same scenario portrayed by John Lydon in 1978… only this time, the feeling is not of being ‘cheated’. It’s of being ‘trapped’.

On Monday, the Environment Ministry announced the dates for this year’s Autumn trapping season, which will run from 20 October to 31 December. In that time, trappers will be allowed to catch seven species of finch: linnet, goldfinch, greenfinch, siskin, hawfinch, chaffinch and serin.

For the time being I’ll ignore the cruel irony that it had to be the ‘Environment’ Ministry (backed by its offshoot, the secretariat for Animal ‘Rights’) that has masterminded a policy that is both harmful to the environment on a wide variety of fronts, as well as a blatant affront to animal welfare.

The more pressing problem is another. The trapping of wild finches is explicitly prohibited by the European Wild Birds Directive, which “bans activities that directly threaten birds, such as the deliberate killing or capture of birds, the destruction of their nests and taking of their eggs, and associated activities such as trading in live or dead birds”.

There are exceptions, listed out in Annex III.I-II. But not a single one of the seven species of finch is anywhere to be seen on either list. The same law also allows for other exceptions, but – and this is the crux of the matter – the European Commission must agree to the exception.

In this case, not only has the government of Malta failed to reach any agreement with the European Commission… but Commissioner Karmenu Vella has (under considerable pressure from his colleagues) made it abundantly clear that Malta will be taken to the European Court of Justice for blatant breach of community law.

Yet the government of Malta presses on with a flagrant illegality – thus subliminally sending out the message that ‘laws’ are only there to be urinated upon – without so much as supplying a justification… which the Commission has been requesting since October 2014.

Let us pause to briefly follow these threads to their inevitable conclusion. Malta will now be dragged to the ECJ to defend a case that has no conceivable leg to stand on. We have openly defied repeated demands (in the form of ‘reasoned opinions’) to collaborate with the Commission… we have ignored a direct warning by the Environment Commissioner, and publicly defied the EU by announcing the dates of a season that depends of the EU’s consent…

What the heck is our defence going to be? Short of pleading insanity, that is? We can’t exactly claim to have been unaware of the illegality of our actions (which wouldn’t constitute a defence anyway). The only thing we can tell the European Court is that we, as a nation, don’t give a toss about European directives anyway. We only joined for the funds, remember?

Actually we don’t even need to say that… we’ve made it pretty damn clear through all our actions since 2004. 

In this case, however, we have also walked into a trap of our own making. And the more you look at this bizarre scenario, the more pervasive this trap starts looking. It’s almost like bottom trawling: the net stretches so wide, and so deep, that everything gets entangled in it sooner or later.

Let’s start with the government, which seems to be acting as though it doesn’t have any real choice in the matter. And to be blunt, it doesn’t. Joseph Muscat knows only too well that part of his massive electoral victory can be attributed to his success in winning over the hunters’ trust before March 2013. He has come perilously close to losing that trust since then, especially during the spring hunting referendum. It’s a risk he knows he can’t afford to run again.

But there is another thing he knows. Even if he himself is trapped in a direction that can only lead to disaster… the rest of us are trapped, too. The only choice available to voters who would base their vote on precisely such issues (a category that includes me) is to vote the Labour Party out. And that means voting in the Nationalist Party, which at every point behaved exactly the same way on both trapping and spring hunting, and pretty much every single other issue concerning the environment.

In 2012, the European Commission had similarly issued a reasoned opinion, after the government announced a ‘derogation’ (again, without any negotiated agreement) on the trapping of golden plover and song thrush. Matters would have almost certainly ended up in the ECJ, were it not for an abrupt change of administration in March 2013.

Even today, under new leadership, the Opposition has not actually denounced the government’s plan to open a trapping season this month. The only reaction came from Charlò Bonnici, who accused Joseph Muscat of having fooled “both environmentalists as well as hunters and trappers”.

“Today’s news that Malta is being taken up to the ECJ is proof of this. Muscat promised trappers the world just to have their vote. He fooled them. The truth is finally out.”

Yes, Mr Bonnici, he fooled us. Just as your party had fooled us when in government, and will fool us again if re-elected. Meanwhile, I can’t help but note that there is no indication in this reaction of whether the PN would stop trapping if it got the chance.

I’d almost ask you for a clarification now, but… there isn’t any point, is there? Both parties have been nothing if not 100% consistent in their positions on this issue. Both are trapped by an invisible net of past electoral promises, and held at gunpoint by a small lobby group that could (and, in the past, has) seriously dent their electoral fortunes.

If this pattern were limited only to hunting and trapping, it would be dismal enough. But as years go by it seems the net has broadened to include all sorts of other issues, too. In a political climate where party leaders hang from each other’s chops like pitbull terriers, you’d be amazed at the sheer diversity of bizarre things they will find to actually agree on. 

Both now agree with a sub-seabed tunnel to Gozo, though neither has a clue about the feasibility of this project as the relevant studies have yet to be carried out. It’s exactly the same pattern as with this week’s trapping endeavour: the important thing is not whether this or that can be done… it’s whether voters believe that it can be done, and to hell with the long-term consequences.

And that, ultimately, is how the trap finally closes in on all of us. We’re all stuck in the same cage, left with no option but to be played against each other by the jealous shenanigans of our ‘managers’, while they take turns to settle snugly into the driver’s seat. 

For again: how remarkably applicable John Lydon’s observation has all along been to our predicament today: “We were allowed to resent each other, and left up to our own devices, which unfortunately turned to spite…”