Yesterday I was at a press conference given by a group of lawyers and one former judge, on the subject of whether the referendum on spring hunting spells the beginning of the end for other "hobbies" and interests too, like fireworks.
The answer to that is no, but this has received a good deal of coverage in the news already and so I would like to stick to something that was said at the end of the press conference.
Just as everybody was packing up to go, it occurred to me that the most obvious question had not been asked, because we have been bullied into believing that the vote is secret, even for public personalities and politicians. Only one of the four addressing the press conference had so far made his voting intentions (very) public – he’s voting No. So I asked the other three, the lawyer Mark Bencini, the president of the Chamber of Advocates Reuben Balzan, and Giovanni Bonello, who served for many years as a judge at the European Court of Human Rights and who until recently presided over the government’s Justice Commission. How do they intend to vote in the referendum? All three said that they would vote No - against spring hunting.
My next question followed naturally on from that. What do they think about a situation in which politicians, who ask for our vote, are reluctant or even completely unwilling to tell us where they stand on such an important matter? Aren’t politicians obliged to tell us how they are going to vote in the referendum? Judge Bonello’s reply was: “Legally, they are not obliged. But ethically and morally, yes, they are.”
Precisely so – it is absolutely disgusting that members of parliament and future candidates for our vote (those who plan to stand for election for the first time in 2018) are refusing to say how they will vote. In this way, they hope to keep both sides happy, straddling that painfully spiked fence and refusing to commit themselves. Those who plan to vote Yes are fearful of alienating the support or good opinion of the many people like me who are strongly against spring hunting. And those who plan to vote No are more terrified still of the lashing they will get on social media and in conversation from the hunting lobby, who – let’s face it – are a lot more scary than the environmentalists, conservationists and birdwatchers.
They probably think they are being ever so clever and sly, keeping us all guessing. But they don’t come across that way at all; they come across as completely gutless and lacking the courage of their convictions. In other words, just what you don’t need your politicians to be. Given a choice between the politician who says openly that he or she plans to vote Yes to spring hunting, and the politician who I know will be voting No but is too cowardly to say so in public, I’ll vote for the former.
There is no place for cowards in the world of politics today. insulting us, the electorate. There is a reason why votes in parliament are not secret, and the same reason holds true in this respect.
I admire those lawyers for taking a public stand on the matter of whether this referendum is going to spell the end of fireworks and fishing for fun. There are another eight besides the ones who were present for the press conference. They are Kevin Aquilina, who is dean of the Faculty of Laws at the University of Malta, Max Ganado, Philip Manduca, Edward Debono, Graziella Bezzina, Stephen Muscat, David Meli and Richard Camilleri. They have done what the politicians failed to do properly or at all: explain to people the difference between an abrogative referendum brought by public petition, like this one, and a ‘propositive’ referendum, which can only be held by government decision – like the referendums on EU membership and divorce. In a scared-ofeverything-and-everyone place like Malta, where everybody seems to fear retribution or that they might cross somebody with dire consequences for themselves, even something as plain as this counts as sticking your neck out. And as we have seen already, even those with a seat in parliament and those who plan to have a seat in parliament are acting like a bunch of big girl’s blouses on the matter.