Magnetic personality Saviour Balzan is leading the No campaign
What an absolutely brilliant idea. He’s bound to pull in the punters in droves, wouldn’t you say. His sidekick is Moira Delia, who works for him on his TVM show Gourmet – an aging showgirl who ‘loves animals’ when this is not about loving animals but about environmental conservation.
Then there’s Carina Camilleri, a model agent known only for taking three hours to compose an outfit to wear around Naxxar, who ‘love dogs’.
I despair. I’m surrendering my white flag to the hunters as of now.
Sure, people voted for divorce despite the campaign being led by that vicious and unstable piece of work, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, but that’s because they wanted divorce legislation and didn’t need to be persuaded. Significantly fewer people are motivated in the same way about spring hunting, and my deep, deep fear is that the chattering classes who habitually speak onto to each other are in that dangerous comfort zone where they think that their view is widely held just because all their friends hold it.
I’m so worried about this.
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A round of vicars and tarts.
Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando was simply the one who set the ball rolling. The face of divorce throughout the campaign was Deborah Schembri, who has a much more endearing personality than Pullicino Orlando.
Back then, she even had the advantage of not being affiliated with one political party or another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsGvfAdhfsE
0.50, Busuttil interviewed during the EU campaign, confirms he got his info regarding hunting from a certain Sur Saviour Balzan.
Ouch.
Don’t worry Daphne it’s a win win campaign Moira and Carina will attract many many men and then there is of course Saviour Balzan to swoon the girls.
I thot i thaw a putthycat
Does anyone happen to know the average number of the electorate?
Because my understanding is if they don’t get at least a 50% turn out, it will be declared null. Technically the hunters’ best bet is to stay home.
The No campaign is looking really shoddy. I think it has not realised what it is up against yet.
There is this assumption that Malta has moved on and will vote against spring hunting in a heartbeat.
Many fail to realise that:
a) one’s milieu is not representative of society as a whole, and
b) many people are indifferent and will not even bother to vote unless actively persuaded to do so.
With poor campaign leaders, poor arguments (birds are so beautiful, killing is wrong and so on) and with political parties squarely behind hunters, from where I’m standing, this once in a lifetime opportunity to abolish spring hunting looks like it is going to be lost.
Before anyone points it out, I know that the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party are technically not behind hunters, but that’s not how people see it.
In people’s eyes, the leader is the embodiment of the party. If the leader supports spring hunting, then the party does so too.
The Yes vote will win with 60% of the vote – mark my words.
The Yes vote will never win by voting. They will win by staying away and depleting the voting numbers, thus reducing it to below 50 % of electorate.
This looks like one of those Joseph Musat stage-managed acts, where he picked two of his worst stooges to lead the No vote, thus ensuring the Unlimited hunting wins the day.
This seems to be deliberate. Saviour Balzan’s campaign will be as successful as John Dalli’s campaign for the PN leadership that he managed and was a flop.
Worst news for the No campaign ever. Where are the rationale and normal people to lead the No campaign? Were they really scratching the bottom of the barrell?
Your comments are in my view misguided if you support the No campaign. Discrediting the leaders of this campaign will only help the opposing Yes campaign.
[Daphne – Hardly. The divorce campaign was led by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, who few sensible people could stand. It is up to the campaign leaders to prove themselves in the campaign, not up to anybody else to discredit them. Saying that a showgirl who ‘loves animals’ is not a fit and proper person to lead a campaign for a conservation vote is stating a fact, not discrediting. Saviour Balzan at least knows what the arguments are and has a background in the subject, but he’s an absolutely hopeless communicator. My concerns are reasonable. I want the No vote to have a fighting chance at least.]
We must put Losco on the spot. And the ghastly but useful Joe Azzopardi. Oh and Andrew Azzopardi too, though he’ll probably come out in favour of the Yes camp. And Joseph Calleja.
Maltese Tenor saves Maltese Falcon.
Tony “Issa daqshekk” Zarb would be brilliant.
Mhux l-aqwa li jghaddu ta’ l-intellettwali. Hawn Malta intellettwali huwa biss self-declared u mhux self-declared bil-provi.
Ma fhimtx. L-ebda wiehed minn dawn m’huwa intelletwali. Le, lanqas Andrew Azzopardi.
I wonder if those living abroad will get reduced flight fares to come to Malta to vote.
A No vote doesn’t need a campaign. Only pathetic people change their views regarding hunting … either you are pro or you are against.
It’s going to be difficult for hunters to vote Yes if Moira is telling everyone to vote No.
His warped ideologies never cease to amaze me.
He has no respect for consistency. Just like his newspaper and the people who are allowed to put those warped comments on his site.
Their comments make Eddy Privitera’s look mild.
Laughing out f88king Loud.
The man is as pathetic as his site.
The people who comment on his site are equally pathetic.
Instead of pointing fingers at people and discrediting a whole campaign, isn’t it better if all of us simply try our best to make sure the No vote wins the referendum?
Or are we just happy to be armchair critics and discard a campaign, and then have gossip fodder about hunters for years to come and complain how they “held the country to ransom?”
So I suggest all of you ignore the people being the face of the campaign if you don’t like it and simply go and spread the word and convince people to vote No. Grumbling about TV personalities isn’t going to do anything except satisfy your ivory-tower perceptions.
Just vote No, and convince others to vote No. There is hope yet. It’s mid-January – we have 3 months. Get working.
Oh and by the way – here’s a quote for you:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”. Margaret Mead.
Perhaps an injection of optimism in our outlook on life can bring about positive change. Call me Pollyanna – I couldn’t give a rat’s ass. Just walk the talk and be the change-bringing citizen by campaigning.
[Daphne – I have done enough of that as it is over the last quarter-century, thank you, and certainly a damn sight more than you ever have or will.]
Oh really? Than you ever have? Of course, I’m not in my 50s. I’m in my late 20s. There’s many years of working on these issues ahead for me.
So please do push for the No vote. Moira and Saviour are there to stay whether we like or not (and yes, I agree he’s not a very good communicator). There’s more to life than image, you know.
Otherwise the hunters will have their day. Which, I trust, is something you don’t want.
[Daphne – ‘There’s more to life than image, you know.’ No, not in a campaign like this, where image is as important as information. Also, the image has to be contextually appropriate. In other words, the image of somebody who fronts for fashion or ‘fun’ TV shows is contextually inappropriate for a referendum campaign about bird conservation. The appropriate image for that would be contextual credibility. It’s precisely because I’m in my 50s that I have 25 years of experience in this kind of thing, so don’t diss it. In my early 20s I had none – just like you.]
I offer an image consultancy service (not that anyone’s buying) so my suggestion would be to drop the Xarabank/tart/boring chatshow host/hippie faces of the campaign and go for masculine meme (i.e. BEAT THE HUNTERS AT THEIR OWN GAME).
Get the cyclists to RIDE FOR NO. Get the rugby players. Get the farmers (we haven’t any lumberjacks or I’d have suggested those) and racing enthusiasts. Get the entire crew of Bertu’s Gym.
For the pepe’ crowd, get the yachtsmen and offshore racers.
Get some craggy outdoorsman, all cammed up and wearing Gucci kit, and show him shooting birds with a telephoto lens.
Get all the paragliding nuts, give them a GoPro, and give us the bird’s eye view.
Get all the daredevil parachutists to carry a NO banner in a mass drop.
I’ll run the image campaign if you wish.
[Daphne – I couldn’t agree with you more. Branding the No campaign with luvvies, ‘style icons’, 21st-century hippies and kooky people is the surest way to kill the No vote. But these things are either understood instinctively or they’re not understood at all, with disaster ensuing.]
That’s how Labour won the election. It ran a masculine campaign – which was an amazing marketing feat given that its leader is anything but. PN’s campaign was feminine – matronly to be precise.
And now the No campaign is boring-and-asexual-tending-to-gay.
(The “Gucci” up there is, of course, not the fashion brand, but what is known across the pond as “tacticool”.)