[ANALYSIS] Hunters: From kingmakers to toxic liability?

Suspending the autumn season amid widespread illegalities cannot have been an easy choice for Prime Minister Muscat, who partly owes his superlative electoral majorities to his pact with the hunting lobby.

Weighing on his decision was the spotlight thrown on Malta after Commission President Jean Claude Juncker nominated Karmenu Vella as his commissioner for the environment. 

Also weighing on Muscat is the public outrage generated by episodes of illegal poaching which is turning an electoral asset into a toxic liability for Labour in government.

Moreover, the spate of hunting illegalities coupled with last Sunday’s violent episodes offers Muscat a unique opportunity to break free of obligations to the hunting lobby.

Clearly in Muscat’s mind the risk of seeing Vella’s candidature jettisoned because of his government’s track record on hunting clearly outweighed the inevitable disappointment the season’s curtailment would cause among hunters.

Muscat still faces the problem of what to do after October 10, when hunting can resume again, and what stance he is to take with regard to the anti-Spring hunting referendum.

But the dynamics unleashed by Muscat’s bold and unexpected decision to curtail the autumn season, may well have sealed the fate of the hunting lobby in the spring hunting referendum due next year. For the revulsion caused by the illegal hunting of protected birds and the hunters’ offensive and violent reaction to the suspension may give the yes movement the necessary momentum to ensure a big turnout in the referendum.

The chickens coming home to roost

Surely for Labour Muscat’s decision comes at a cost for the simple reason that the hunting lobby has provided key support in two consecutive elections.

Labour would probably have still won the last general election comfortably even without the support of the hunters’ federation, the FKNK, but it would certainly not have been with the wide margin he got. 

Hunters probably had an even more pivotal role in Labour’s success in last June’s MEP election.

Candidates like the Gozitan Clint Camilleri, who was 200 votes short of being elected, openly campaigned on a pro-hunting platform.

Moreover just days after these elections parliamentary secretary Michael Falzon presented a 100,000-signature strong hunters’ petition asking for parliament to change the law to avoid any referendum affecting “minority rights”, aimed to short circuit the referendum result if it went against the hunters. 

Subsequently Muscat’s government embarked on a public consultation aimed at postponing local elections to 2019, following declarations by FKNK officials in favour of a stand-alone referendum.

Moreover during the past months not only were laws changed to remove the 3pm hunting curfew but the government has also announced plans to apply derogation to allow finch trapping despite previous indications by the EC that this is in breach of EU law.

Muscat’s quandary

Numerous incidents involving poachers killing protected birds like the graceful stork, the pretended bringer of babies, were becoming a continuous embarrassment for a media-savvy government. 

Moreover on this issue there is a clear divide between two categories of voters courted by Muscat; hunters and liberal younger voters.

Hunting may be one of a few issues where Muscat’s Labour is in a minority. 

So far Labour’s logic has been dictated by a plausible calculation. While the anti hunting majority is passive, hunters are one of the most volatile and boisterous electoral groups who tend to shift allegiances in elections. This is because hunting is a ‘do or die’ issue for them, though not for society at large.

Simply put those who are against hunting do not consider the issue so important to affect their choice of government. 

But the cases of illegal poaching over the past weeks coupled by the hunters’ violent reaction to Muscat’s bold decision to suspend the season may well have made mainstream voters less willing to tolerate the political blackmail of the hunting lobby.

History repeats itself

While it was Dom Mintoff who was the first politician to be vilified by hunters for introducing a closed season, under Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, Alfred Sant and Joseph Muscat Labour has positioned itself as the pro-hunting party.

In this way Labour has benefited from the hunters’ political blackmail, exploiting hunters’ grievances against Nationalist governments in both the 1996 and 2013 elections. Labour did so fully knowing the propensity of this lobby group to resort to bullying and intimidation, which culminated in threats against the national heritage when the phrase namur jew intajru was written on the megalithic temple Hagar Qim’s floor.

The betrayal of promises made before the 1998 election and the EU referendum further soured the relationship between hunters and the PN.

The hunting lobby also reacted violently when, like Muscat today, then minister George Pullicino stopped the spring hunting season in May 2007 following a spate of illegal poaching.

This decision came weeks after a violent protest the previous March against a legal notice shortening the spring season, during which journalists were beaten and government officials vilified. Unlike Sunday’s spontaneous protest, the attacks on journalists in 2007 took place in a protest officially organised by the FKNK.

The PN did try to heal the rift with hunters by defending the spring hunting derogation in the European court. But hunters preferred to align themselves with Labour to secure a better deal. 

This should have been a lesson for Muscat – after feeling betrayed, hunters are unlikely to forgive.

Muscat’s advantage is that this time round hunters cannot blackmail him by threatening to shift their votes to the PN – the latter has so far supported the decision to curtail the season.

The Juncker method

Environmentalists all over Europe were shocked by Jean Claude Juncker’s nomination of Karmenu Vella as the environment commissioner with the specific instructions to revise the Birds Directive.

Yet recent events indicate that Juncker’s choice of Vella as the commissioner in charge of the environment may well have upped the ante on the Maltese government to deal with illegal hunting. 

With Vella’s grilling due on 29 September, cases of illegal poaching were bound to backfire on his candidature due to the perceived complicity between the Maltese government and the hunting lobby. And the government would not want to see Vella’s responsibilities as commissioner being assigned to someone else, not after it boasted that these responsibilities were the most significant ever given to Malta.

Only a draconian action like curtailing the season could possibly convince MEPs about Malta’s credibility.

But with a referendum on Spring hunting due next year and the EC bound to react to the derogation on trapping, the question is how far Muscat will go in distancing himself from hunters after October 10, when the hunting season resumes. 

Muscat knows that Vella will be tested in the next weeks on his readiness to act on issues like hunting and trapping in Malta. Moreover Malta will be under the spotlight for the simple reason that Vella is Maltese.

In the past months Muscat has shown that he is not keen on Malta gaining the status of a pariah nation and that ultimately he would avoid confrontation with EU institutions. It was the same logic which drove Muscat to backtrack on the planned pushback of migrants when faced by an injunction issued by the European Court of Human Rights.

Muscat was also willing to change the citizenship law to introduce a period of residence, following the intervention of the EU commission. In the same way Muscat has indicated that he may now be willing to take a harder line with hunters to avoid the embarrassment of seeing his man in Brussels fail.

What are the options for Prime Minister Joseph Muscat?

Option 1 • Dumping the hunting lobby

The protest by 200-300 hunters who hurled insults at the Prime Minister before embarking on a rampage, which saw journalists and bird watchers attacked, has surely alienated hunters from a segment of sympathetic Labour voters.

Surveys have shown that Labour voters are the only category likely to vote no strongly in the forthcoming anti-Spring hunting referendum.

After last June’s euro elections a surge of support for spring hunting among Labour voters seriously eroded the yes vote, which fell from 59% to just 44%.

Last Sunday’s protest and loud mouth insults may well have changed this trend.

On the other hand popular support for Muscat’s bold decision to cut the season short in the face of illegal poaching is likely to have boosted Muscat’s ratings. 

While Muscat shares a great part of the blame for giving hunters the impression that they can hold his government to ransom, he may now feel more at ease basking in the popularity of standing up to them.

Moreover, unlike developers, hunters do not wield economic power, thus making it easier for Muscat to dump them.

Muscat may well be in the same position as the Nationalist government following violent wild cat strikes by public transport operators in 2008, after what they perceived as a betrayal of pre-election promises.

The spate of illegal poaching and violent outbursts may well provide Muscat with the opportunity to renege on commitments made to hunters, letting them dig their own grave through their own actions.

While it is extremely unlikely that Muscat will support the plebiscite, he may well take the back seat in the spring hunting referendum and let Labour supporters vote according to their conscience.

Ironically by suspending the autumn season to stop illegalities, Muscat has unwittingly legitimised the claim made by environmentalists that the best way to protect birds in spring when bird migration is at its peak, is by stopping the season on a permanent basis.

As regards the autumn season, he may adopt the same position as this year; by making it clear that he would suspend the season at the first sign of poaching illegalities.

This would appear consistent with Muscat’s position that he only favours hunting within legal parameters, though there would not be the pressure of a looming MEP grilling of his commissioner.

Muscat may send a clear sign that he has changed tack by allowing next year’s referendum to coincide with local elections.

Since the decision to postpone elections to 2019 was submitted to public consultation Muscat is still in time to shift to reverse.

Recent events have not only exposed the violent streak of the hunting lobby but have highlighted the risk of voters’ intimidation on polling day.

Simply put voters may feel pressured not to vote if polling stations are presided by hunters who would take note of all those who voted. This could be an important factor in closely knit small villages in Gozo and rural Malta.

Yet if given cover by simultaneous local elections, voters in a substantial part of Malta will not face this problem.

Ironically Muscat’s decision to temporarily jettison the season may make it more difficult for him to change tack on the postponement of elections, simply because hunters may abstain in the next round of local elections to register their protest against Muscat’s presumed betrayal.

Still, even if local elections are postponed, the momentum for the referendum, thanks to last Sunday’s events, has become unstoppable and turnout may not be affected by the postponement of local elections. 

Option 2 • Striking an elusive balance

Muscat may still try to strike an elusive balance on this issue by forcing the FKNK to take a harder line against illegal poachers and persist in the bid to distinguish between law-abiding hunters and those who break the law. 

Muscat’s calculation in suspending the autumn season may well have been to force the hand of law abiding hunters in distancing themselves from and reporting the criminal fringe which is endangering the future of the hobby.

In this way, Muscat may still benefit from public support for standing up to the hunters by suspending the season while still supporting the hunting lobby in the spring hunting referendum.

Moreover his present stand off with the hunters may well serve to obfuscate the decision to postpone local elections to 2019 to thwart the referendum. 

For by standing firm with the hunters the electorate will be less likely to associate the postponement of local elections with the referendum.

One pitfall of this strategy is that it ignores one fundamental reality: that a community of gun toting people who kill birds for a hobby is bound to include within it criminal and violent elements. 

Moreover events following Muscat’s decision to suspend the season have confirmed the public perception that the hunting lobby is a bullish lot. 

Muscat may also become more reticent in being associated with what has increasingly become a toxic liability for Labour.

Any PR-conscious Prime Minister like Muscat will not enjoy being associated with violent antics. 

In this way Muscat’s obsession with being liked by aspirational middle class voters, may outweigh the short-term electoral benefits of supporting hunters.

Coincidentally the hunting ban coincided with inclusive independence celebrations which pandered to the royalist sentiments of a sector of the population.

In this scenario Muscat may also play hard to satisfy both the redneck and bourgeois audiences through occasional symbolic gestures, sometimes benefiting one side, sometimes the other.

Option 3 • Patching up after the EU storm

Patching up with the hunting lobby after Karmenu Vella survives the grilling, if he does, may well have been an option before hunters shot themselves in the foot by taking to the streets as they have always done in the past when their blackmail failed.

In fact, in view of the climate of intimidation and violence, re-opening the season on 10 October may be inadvisable. For any abuse after that date may well expose the suspension of the season as a charade aimed at appeasing a European audience.

But Muscat may still be reticent on severing all ties with one of the most volatile groups of voters. 

He may try to compensate the hunting lobby by defying the European Commission by pressing on with the trapping derogation. But this course of action would seriously embarrass Karmenu Vella in his new role as environment commissioner.

Much also depends on the attitude taken by the Nationalist Party which so far has backed the government decision to suspend the season. 

If the PN does not try to exploit hunters’ disgruntlement as Labour did in opposition, hunters will suddenly find themselves politically orphaned. 

But if the PN starts sending mixed messages by giving voice to hunters’ grievances on its media, Muscat may well start getting cold feet.

If Muscat has a green epiphany and the PN plays ball, for the first time hunters may lose their bargaining chip by pitting one party against the other in an auction of concessions.

This will leave the hunting lobby no option but to threaten abstention or to field their own candidates in elections, a strategy already tried with disastrous results in the 2004 European elections when Lino Farrugia garnered a mere 1.3% of the votes cast.

The most likely future scenario is one in which Muscat is more reticent on being perceived as being in cahoots with the hunters even if he may still strive to accommodate hunters by policy concessions.