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Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici’s opposition to the public endorsement of the European Constitution by the Malta Labour Party, and John Dalli’s public condemnation at the way the party administration is running the Nationalist Party have placed a hornet’s nest at the heart of both parties.
The MLP’s and PN’s intolerance, privately and not so privately, risks as a minimum tearing apart the publicly declared commitment to allowing different views within the parties.
To date the culture of one-size-fits-all has been the way both parties have operated.
In this respect they are identical, the one a mirror of the other. Few ever dared dissent, and even fewer ever dared object to any policy endorsed by the leader. Party policy has always been the view of the leader who expects total loyalty from his parliamentarians and elder statesmen within the party.
Well, all of this risks blowing away with the wind as KMB’s opposition starts gaining support within a party whose membership is still confused following the volte face on the EU issue.
The MLP’s decision to endorse a Constitution it has been tearing to shreds for years claiming amongst other things that it makes a mockery of our neutrality status should be discussed openly in the party structures and certainly in the party clubs too.
To stifle dissent is in total contradiction to the very spirit of the European Constitution. Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici may in fact be voicing the views of more than one or two confused labourites. His support, albeit privately, may be wider spread than acknowledged by the party leadership.
Similarly the warning shots being sent in the direction of the party administration by John Dalli may ring a bell and be music to the ears of a wider number of nationalists than the PN administration may be acknowledging.
This is most unlikely to be evident in this weekend’s party administration voting, but it will be the wider country as a whole to be supportive.
It may well be that these two politicians are winning more support outside the party structures than within.
The reason is that the parties risk being behind the mood in the country where a growing number of people feel that different views and opinions make up for a healthy political party.
The democratic way forward is to allow currents of opinion with different views being debated in as fully a transparent manner as possible. This amounts to a healthy democracy where policy is arrived at after an open party debate and where policy is no longer, as has been the case over a number of years, the personal opinion of the leader.
Both parties are well-advised to take note of this dissent which may be appearing very insignificant at this moment in time but will most likely to grow unless the dissent is allowed to be voiced and openly discussed in the country as a whole, in the media and no longer in the serenity and comfort of party headquarters.
A press conference by the head of the nature unit of the European Commission reveals the vast extent of the European Commission’s failure to comprehend the Maltese hunting and trapping situation.
The head’s unit Mr Hanley was reported to have said that the Commission was content with the level of enforcement on the Islands. He proved beyond doubt that Brussels technocrats make their conclusions by reading reports and data filed rather than fieldwork and hard evidence.
The salient issue is the stark reality that a free-for-all in the hunting in Malta will not be changing in the very near future.
Hunting in spring in Malta is a misnomer. It takes place on the premise that the hunting of two species, the turtle dove (gamiema) and quail (sumiena), are shot because these are the only species that can be shot in Malta.
In reality the vast majority of Maltese and Gozitan hunters with little exception shoot at anything that flies. A day in the countryside helps one understand the culture of Maltese hunting.
Bona fide hunters are such a rare encounter that they are as common as the extinct Dodo. The countryside is home to hundreds of trigger-happy young and adult hunters who blast away at migrating swallows, swifts and kestrels – birds which under no stretch of one’s imagination can be considered as game birds.
Worse still, endangered species such as the peregrine falcon which in the mid-eighties bred on the Gozitan cliffs of Ta’ Cenc have been exterminated together with other birds.
Although there is no doubt that there has been an improvement in enforcement the truth is that it is impossible to check on each and every hunter and trapper. The only solution is banning spring hunting. The Maltese countryside would finally breathe some relief.
Environment Minister George Pullicino should not wait for the Commission to constrain him to take this action. He should read the writing on the wall and act. He will probably have the general public on his side but some party cronies against him.
Sooner or later, the technocrats in Brussels will have to be sidelined and the European Parliament, with not much help from the Maltese representatives, will oblige the Commission to ask Malta remove its derogation and ban Spring hunting.
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