GUEST POST: The political parties should stay out of the spring-hunting issue and allow a referendum to decide the matter

This guest post, by somebody who would rather go unnamed, has been written in response to the appeal today by the Coalition Against Spring Hunting – which collected enough signatures to petition for a referendum on the matter – for the political parties to stay out of it and then simply stick to implementing the will of the people.

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Finally, someone from the environmental NGOs has seen through Prime Minister Muscat and the way he’s trying to win the spring hunting referendum for the hunters.

Rudolph Ragonesi, who runs the Gaia Foundation and is spokesman for the Coalition Against Spring Hunting, has appealed to politicians not to join the fray, thank you very much. The position of the political parties is not an issue, he said. Let the people decide.

Joseph Muscat has repeatedly declared himself to be in favour of spring hunting and has asked Simon Busuttil to take a position, saying that the Nationalists are “once again sitting on the fence as with the civil unions bill”.

Of course, pro-Muscat journalists continue to be mesmerised and, even though they are anti-hunting, keep repeating what Muscat says, no questions asked.

The Nationalists were quite clear on both civil unions – in favour – and gay adoption – against. The way they voted was the only way they could vote once they decided to vote as one Opposition, with the whip, and not as 30 independents, without it.

In an altogether different matter – a referendum on hunting birds in spring – the Nationalists are now showing they have learned something from their divorce referendum debacle. Let the people decide. It was something they practised in the EU referendum and which Labour did not.

Neither its leader Sant, nor his acolyte Muscat, now our prime minister, acknowledged that referendum result. The whole of the Labour Opposition voted against Malta’s accession treaty in parliament despite the referendum result and the result of the general election which followed, and Muscat wrote an article praising this decision after several articles in which he wrote that he hoped it would happen.

In any case, it was a Nationalist government that gave the electorate the power to remove ordinary laws by means of a referendum vote.

The real players in this referendum are the Coalition Against Spring Hunting and the hunters federation, the FKNK, which knows that a substantial majority of the electorate will vote against spring hunting.

But the FKNK also knows that, because this is an abrogative referendum, it requires a 50% voter turnout to be valid. That’s why its only game is encouraging high levels of abstention.

What does Muscat need to play the hunters’ game? Polarisation. He wants his anti-hunting supporters to switch off their brain and just think ‘Joseph’. That’s how Malta barely elected a Nationalist government in 1987, after the worst five years we had since independence, with a majority of just 4,800 votes: polarisation. When people are polarised, they stop thinking and start behaving like football fans.

If Muscat manages to make hunting a political football, he will then tell his supporters to abstain. It doesn’t take much effort. He did it with the EU referendum though he failed catastrophically there. But then he was only a Super One TV reporter and party apparatchik. Now he’s the leader.

Your typical Labour supporter is already regimented as he is. Even if you assume just 50% support for the Muscat/FKNK abstention (Labour got 55% in the last general election), adding the 7% who don’t even vote in a general election, you get an abstention of 53%. Hunters home and dry; spring hunting for ever.

But for this to happen, Muscat needs the Nationalists to engage in a slanging match. Then he’ll tell his supporters: tpaxxix lil Simon, tmurx tivvota.

He wielded precisely the same weapon in the divorce referendum and got most of his conservative supporters to stay at home rather than vote against divorce, biex ma jpaxxux lil Gonzi . The pro-divorce vote was no landslide; at 122,500, it was a full 10,000 votes fewer than the Nationalists’ 2013 historic low.

So, to those journalists and environmentalists who go weak at the knees when they think about Joseph: please stop saying what a great strategist Muscat is. Yes, he is; just like many leaders in history who you really wouldn’t want to associate with. Best not name names or he might get upset.

If you are one of those who are mesmerised by Joseph, you’d better start understanding what his strategies mean and how sad it would be to see him claim victory for hunters in the referendum by having duped the anti-hunting camp itself. One of the things this man seems to enjoy most is the perverse satisfaction of getting people to do the opposite of what they believe in.

His satisfaction will be riding to victory with the hunters on the backs of environmentalists who remain largely fascinated by him.

Rather than letting Joseph Muscat fascinate you further, question him. It is the government which sets the date for the referendum. Will the Prime Minister hold the hunting referendum with the local council elections in March?