It’s not just about birds

Next Saturday’s referendum is not just about spring hunting, or the need to protect wild birds in a country where birdlife has been decimated in recent years. 

It is also about safeguarding the most basic democratic principles, which are all too often under threat in Malta. This became evident when FKNK president Joe Perici Calascione this week openly declared that his organisation would seek ‘legal means’ to overturn the result in the event of a ‘No’ victory… a statement which clearly confirms that the express wishes of the electorate are of no concern to a lobby group that is more accustomed to always getting its own way. 

It is difficult to imagine a more direct challenge to the principles of democracy, than a threat to overturn a referendum result. At face value it is also difficult to imagine what form of ‘legal means’ may exist to achieve this aim. It is worth remembering that the hunters’ association has already tried to prevent this referendum from even being held in the first place. This, too, was attempted through ‘legal means’; but the attempt failed.

The Constitutional Court has already rejected the FKNK’s objections to the referendum process, and ruled that the vote may proceed as planned. It is therefore unclear how the same court can possibly be expected to reject the result of a referendum it had previously approved itself.

But even if this latest threat clearly cannot be fulfilled, it does give an indication of how the hunting lobby views the democratic process as a whole. Perici Calascione’s statement makes it clear that only one possible outcome can ever be considered acceptable to the ‘Yes’ campaign… and that is the outcome his own lobby wants to achieve. 

If the electorate dares to defy the hunters’ lobby by voting ‘No’, his association will try and overturn the result. This in turn indicates that the only form of democracy that the FKNK is willing to respect is a ‘democracy’ that always gives it what it wants.

For ordinary citizens who respect the fundamental principles of democracy, such attitudes may come across as shocking and disturbing. Yet this is precisely how the hunting lobby has always behaved with regard to the political process. Ever since the issue of spring hunting first assumed political significance in the 1990s, the hunters’ representatives have consistently (and successfully) tried to impose their own demands on the government of the day. 

Efforts to introduce limits and stricter regulations in the 1990s were met with furious protests and threats of reprisals at the time. These extended to acts of vandalism targeting historical monuments such as Borg In-Nadur and Mnajdra, where the words ‘Namur Jew Intajru’ were spray-painted on the megaliths. And when, a decade later, the Gonzi administration was forced by the European Commission to close the spring season in 2008, hunters descended upon Valletta en masse for a protest that quickly degenerated into an unsightly, violent fracas. 

Malta even slipped some places in the International Press Freedom Index, after journalists were attacked and hurt while trying to cover those events.

Ironically, the only reason this referendum is being held at all is precisely because of the intransigence and obstinacy with which the hunters have always refused to make any concessions whatsoever. With both Labour and Nationalist parties consistently cowed into submission by a lobby group which has never hesitated in flexing its own political muscle, the anti-spring hunting lobby was left with no option but to go directly to the polls. 

The hunters’ response was to first try and sabotage the abrogative referendum process… and when this backfired, the next logical step was to try and pre-emptively sabotage the result in the event that it goes against their expectations. At no point in this entire process did the hunters’ representatives ever give any consideration to the wishes and expectations of the wider electorate. It has always been a case of ‘our way, or nothing’.

This is clearly an affront to the democratic process, in which it should be the people to decide on such matters as whether or not to derogate from international law on an issue like spring hunting. But because of the pressure exerted by the hunters themselves on successive governments, the people of Malta have consistently been denied this choice. 

Instead, governments have always presented the position of the hunters as Malta’s own position… even though this stance has never been ratified by any specific vote. Now that a vote is finally to be held on this issue, enabling the general public to have a long overdue say on the matter once and for all, the hunters’ association appears hell-bent on thwarting any result that may contradict its own preferred outcome. This is not the way such decisions should be taken in a 21st century EU member state. 

Next Saturday’s referendum is therefore a litmus test, not just for Malta’s birdlife and environmental conservation, but also for the health of its democratic institutions. It presents an opportunity to once and for all reclaim a decision-making process that has hitherto been hijacked by a single lobby-group, and restore it to the sovereign electorate where it belongs.