Derogate? What's that?

Way back in 1999, I was approached by the government of the day. There was a problem, a very serious problem. Malta had been unable to get its act together where it came to the Birds directive and the Habitats directive.

I know it sounds rather boring but hang on and please read on.

The truth is that Malta’s accession to the European Union depended on addressing this issue. Without putting our house in order, Malta would not be ready in 2002.

I was tasked with finding a solution to this headache.

I could speak the language, understand the subject and more importantly, survive the long nights of rowdiness in heavy cigar smoke and whisky drinking.

I discovered that the officials at MEPA were drowning in bureaucracy and had not finalised data on Malta’s status, and the hunters were completely against European Union membership. They also had no intention of making the accession process on this matter an easy task.

My first priority was to ensure that the most important allies in Europe, Britain, that is, would not knee cap Malta over our stance when it came to the negotiation process.

So I went off to London and I approached them and told them my plan. They appreciated the plan and the reasoning behind it.

My game was to give the hunters enough rope to hang themselves. That is, that they accept the rules they would eventually break.  

I was aware that the hunters were really driven by their emotions and had no understanding of how limited their chances were of spring hunting under an EU regime. 

My job was to convince the Maltese hunters that under very limited and controlled circumstances, hunting was possible in the EU in spring. I gave the conservationists one piece of advice, in the EU our chances for nature conservation were much better than out of the EU.

It worked.

Most readers and Maltese cannot quite understand what a derogation is all about. In layman’s terms it is all about an exemption from the law. And a derogation is a temporary measure under EU law.

I was intrigued by the fact that in France, a derogation was in place for those farmers who produced home-made ‘eau de vie’, a sort of schnapps. The licence was issued to those who had inherited the artisanal home-made recipe and it could not be passed on. In other words, the artisanal drink would die with the present generation.

So I argued that with this analogy we could allow for a transition period for hunting and trapping in Malta, that is until it phases itself out.

On the trapping issues, the problems were just impossible. Trapping is not allowed in the EU. So we argued that there would be four years for all those who had a trapping licence.  The same applied for hunting in spring.

The fact that Joseph Muscat has reopened the trapping season does not mean he is right.  Indeed he is completely wrong. Sooner rather than later the trapping season will have to be closed.  It is only a matter of time before Karmenu Vella is told and ordered to announce this decision. Vella does not take decisions, he implements them.

In reality very few trappers had a licence in 2002, the government of the day dished out hundreds of trapping licences, especially in Gozo, to people who never had a licence.

It is a story I would love to recite in detail one day, and it involves Tonio Borg and Giovanna Debono. Perhaps in Volume 2.

To allow for a constructive structure which would make possible the phasing out of spring hunting I set up the Ornis committee in 1999, and a carnet de chasse – the carnet de chasse being that little book where hunters jot down their killing list.  Little did the hunters realise then that the carnet de chasse would confirm that hunting in spring had an expiry date.

The carnet de chasse was supposed to note their catches and it did. But based on their catches from 2004 until 2008, the European Commission reached the verdict that hunting could not continue in spring. And this shocked the hunters and the government alike.

Not me.

It was based on the premise that Maltese and Gozitan hunters had an alternative, and that alternative was autumn hunting.

Such was the case when the government faced the European Court of Justice, and the court verdict in 2009 was clear: the government had no right to have an exemption because an alternative existed.  

The government and the opposition chose to interpret the court decision in their own way and the hunters learned their lesson.

The hunters’ federation directed its members on its website to deflate the real numbers and that is what happened.

The European Commission is being fed fictitious information and being such a monster organisation and highly inflexible, it is unwilling to question the veracity of these numbers.  Apart from the fact that Karmenu Vella has no intention of rocking the boat.

Mark Sultana, the SHout spokesman put the whole issue into perspective when he answered Reno Bugeja on DISSETT this very week.  

He told Bugeja: “Just imagine you filled up your tax return without enclosing a pay slip and an FS3 form. This is exactly what the hunters are doing, they are recording low or no figures, they are manipulating the numbers. A simple case of inventing numbers.”

Well, negotiations with the EU happened some 14 years ago and today there is little doubt in my mind that the hunters are not entitled to a derogation.  In fact many of them should really be taken back to the Middle Ages when everything that represented life was killed.

They have another serious problem – they are intrinsically geared to killing anything that flies, they also have a moribund view of nature and the countryside.  There is no species of bird they do not shoot at.

In this campaign there are three important rallying cries: the first is the value of having a  countryside without hunting and hunters. The second rallying point is giving wildlife a chance because spring is all about breeding and raising young.  And the third is about an end to the tyranny of hunters and their bullying and intimidation tactics.

It will be a great four weeks from now.  One which will lead to the first abrogative referendum. It brings together people of all creeds and colours.

Let us make this happen, together.

-

Today’s front-page story shows to what level corruption and the culture of favours and nepotism are inculcated in this country.  This is an incestuous country which believes that corruption is okay and that breaking the rules is okay.  As long as there is an added benefit for the culprit.

Gozo is a special case.

Gozo is like a living laboratory for growing a culture of nepotism based on omertà.

We are a nation which is inherently corrupt, and everyone, it seems, is to blame. That is why good governance and zero tolerance are necessary in modern society, where there should be no room for nepotism, which continues to paint an ugly picture of the political class.