[WATCH] Hunting campaigners say Maltese should refuse ‘foreign influence’

The hunting lobby has launched a campaign calling for a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum on spring hunting, called ‘Yes, as Maltese and Europeans’.

The campaign is being fronted by Sylvana Zarb Darmanin, a company manager, Daniel Sciriha, a supervisory in an insurance firm, and lawyer Kathleen Grima – from the law firm of former minister Emmanuel Mallia.

Present in the crowd attending the yes campaign launch were Labour MPs Anthony Agius Decelis, Joe Sammut, Zurrieq mayor Ignatius Farrugia, and Labour candidate Clint Camilleri.

The yes campaign claims it is formed by “minorities” who have joined in the hunting lobbies FKNK’s and KSU’s effort to campaign for a yes vote to retain spring hunting.

Sciriha boasted of the hunters’ success in collecting over 100,000 signatures in under four months for a petition to MPs against the referendum – which petition has been found to contain false signatures – compared to the eight months it took the Coalition Against Spring Hunting to collect 40,000 signatures.

The CASH petition eventually was approved in the Constitutional Court, to hold an abrogative referendum against spring hunting, which is banned by the EU. The referendum asks voters whether they want to stop the Maltese government from derogating from the EU ban on spring hunting.

 “All those forming part of a minority feel threatened by the referendum,” Sciriha said. “Everyone forms part of one minority or another and a group of people are now planning to eradicate traditions and hobbies which make us Maltese.”

Sylvana Zarb Darmanin instead railed against the “influence of foreigners who come to Malta” claiming that the Maltese should “never accept foreigners telling us what we should and shouldn’t do in our countries. They have to respect us, how we live. When we visit the UK, hunting can be held 24 hours every day, including spring and not in 20 mornings a year. We wouldn’t think of campaigning to tell them what to do.”

They also said that both the Labour and Nationalist Parties were supporting the spring hunting derogation.

Lawyer Kathleen Grima, who has filed a libel suit for FKNK chief executive Lino Farrugia against MaltaToday over a cartoon depicting him relieving himself in the countryside, said that “no true Maltese or Gozitan will accept that something accepted by the EU Court should be denied to these same Maltese.”

She was referring to a 2009 European Court of Justice decision that did not ban the derogation from the spring hunting ban employed by the Maltese government.

“Today it’s hunting, tomorrow it will be other activities…. the abrogative referendum can be used against any legislation.”

The campaign will be planting indigenous trees every day up until the 11 April referendum.

Grima said the campaign was separate from the FKNK and the KSU fraternities, when asked to comment over their refusal to give comments to the independent newspapers that are supporting the ‘no’ campaign.

She refused to comment on the libel suit filed by Farrugia. “It is still sub judice… there were other cartoons featuring FKNK and no action was taken. One has yet to see whether this cartoon was libellous or not.”

Grima was asked how she could claim that every hobby was threatened by the abrogative referendum, when spring hunting was the only practice that required derogating from its effective ban

“Hobbies can still be targeted with a law… by holding a referendum on parts of a legal schedule, you can target other laws that provide for, for example, fireworks licences,” Grima said.