Yes campaign urge unity amongst supporters

Valletta’s St.George’s Square echoed to the strains of Muse's hit  song "Uprising" today Thursday evening, interspersed with the applause of diehard hunting supporters as the pro-spring hunting campaign held its final rally this evening before tomorrow’s mandatory “day of silence.”

Campaign spokeswoman Kathleen Grima  addressed the modest-sized crowd of around 150.

Grima thanked the crowd for the support shown during the campaign. That support helped her turn the slings and arrows and “adjectives of all sorts” from the No camp, into determination to succeed, she said.

"The referendum is a democratic tool which should not be used to destroy Maltese traditions and hobbies”, said Grima, warning, “they [No campaign] will not rest until they have destroyed all those who stand against them.”

She quoted the AD manifesto naming Arnold Cassola and Carmel Cacopardo, to boos from the crowd, which she said, named fireworks and other hobbies that “will be next.”

Grima urged those present to show “them” that hunting is a globally accepted and respected practise, more so in Malta, who hunt in spring  “with the blessing of the European court.”

To applause from the crowd, she said that this was not a campaign for hunters but "one for those who believe in respect, if not to hunters but to the European court” which, she said, upheld their right to hunt in Spring.

Previously, Yes campaign spokesperson Sylvana Zarb Darmanin had warmed up the crowd with a selection of xenophobic non-sequiturs. “In other countries they apply thousands of derogations. We are much smaller than them. The UK has over a thousand derogations, we have one and our friends from the No campaign bring the English, the Germans and the French to tell us what we can do in our homeland. Nobody has the right to deny the Maltese their right to apply a derogation like the other Member States."

Yes campaign spokesman Darren Caruana attacked the “sensationalist” methods of the No campaign, saying that SHout took the cheapest route by “shouting and stamping their feet”.

“We didn’t try to scare anyone. We didn’t tell people they might die if they leave their homes in Spring,” he said, accusing the No campaign of sowing division in families and “trying to foist on us the lie that hunters don’t love animals.” "The majority should not steamroll over the minority, who am I to tell people what to do?"

He called on the public to go out and vote and “not let them divide us.”