Spring hunting referendum: difficult but not impossible

For decades, successive administrations of government have always pledged full support to a small minority of hunters, in direct defiance of a much larger majority that opposes the idea of shooting birds in the nesting season.

In case there are doubts regarding the extent of national opposition to spring hunting, suffice it to say that the most recent MaltaToday survey on the subject places the percentage at around 60 - much higher than the 52% that voted in divorce in 2011 or, for that matter, than the 53% that voted Labour at the last election.

However, it is somewhat surprising to see that this coalition, for all its good intentions, would choose the as-yet-untested path of an abrogative referendum - with all the difficulties this path will surely entail - to achieve its objective.

Ironically, if any entity ought to be familiar with precisely how difficult it is to secure the 34,000 signatures necessary to force such a referendum, it should be Alternattiva Demokratika, which just a few years ago tried (and failed) to collect the same number of signatures for a referendum on rent law reform.

And yet, curiously, it would seem that the idea for an abrogative referendum on this issue originated in the AD camp - despite its own previous inability to muster enough support for a similar referendum in the recent past.

The two issues are however different. Certainly spring hunting elicits stronger sentiments (on both sides of the divide) than rent law reform, though past experience shows that mobilising the level of support required for an abrogative referendum is a good deal easier said than done. So much so that while the law on abrogative referenda has existed for almost 20 years, to date no abrogative referendum has ever been held in Malta.

One therefore sincerely hopes that the 13 organisations involved in this campaign fully understand the seriousness of the issue at stake, not to mention their own responsibility to ensure success. If they fail to collect the 34,000 signatures, not only will the referendum not take place, but the message sent out to the authorities will be that the proposal to ban spring hunting simply does not enjoy enough support.

This would be little short of a tragedy, and it must be emphasised that in proposing an abrogative referendum, all 13 organisations involved in this coalition have also pre-emptively assumed collective responsibility for the success or failure of the entire exercise.

Having said this, it remains highly debatable whether there was any realistic alternative to a referendum as a means to bring about the desired result. A cursory glance at recent history strongly suggests that no Maltese government - be it Nationalist or Labour, it makes no difference in this issue - will ever wittingly irk the hunting community in any way (unwittingly, of course, they have done so all the time - but that is only a reflection of just how difficult this lobby is to please).

In fact, the opposite is far likelier to happen: with each passing election, the two main parties have traditionally always competed with each other to provide the hunting community with as many new concessions as possible. Before EU accession, the Labour Opposition entered into formal agreements with the hunters' federation, extending the list of bird species that could legally be hunted (among various other promises). And when it came to negotiating the accession treaty, the Nationalist administration's entire policy was to appease the hunting lobby as much as possible.

Traditionally this has always left the much larger anti-spring hunting lobby politically homeless - and while AD has always been consistent on the issue, it never quite succeeded in translating public sympathy on this issue into votes.

Add to this unwholesome scenario the fact that the European Court of Justice delivered a ruling which - prima facie - permits Maltese governments to open spring hunting seasons under the veneer of legality, and the available options start looking rather thin on the ground.

Sadly this is also a reflection of the paucity of political debate in Malta: as in the case of divorce, referenda in our country have come to represent a tool with which one can force governments to take difficult decisions that, left to their own devices, they will simply carry on postponing forever.

As a result of all this institutionalised apathy, a large swathe of Maltese public opinion has for years been ignored in order to maintain a practice that flies in the face of all accepted norms of conservation.

Quite frankly, this has to stop. And if an abrogative referendum is the only method to force a change in government policy on this issue, then - difficult though it may be to achieve - this newspaper will fully support the initiative.

There are enough people out there who agree with the urgent need to put a stop to spring hunting. All that remains is a final effort to bring this majority out into the open where it belongs: not an easy task by any account... but not impossible either.