The prime minister made his first real foray into the Yes campaign last weekend, sticking his neck out on behalf of those who want to carry on shooting birds in the breeding season. This despite his having said, when he declared his position weeks ago (a position that was no surprise, while the Opposition leader’s most certainly was) that he, his party and his government would not be campaigning at all, and that everybody is free to vote as they please (you don’t say).

So what brought it on? I would say that it was the poll results published by the newspaper Malta Today, last Sunday, which show that those who are against shooting birds in spring have a seven-point lead on those who are in favour of it. Yes, those who are in favour of shooting birds in spring – it sounds harsh, and the Yes camp have tried to portray their vote as being one in favour of freedom and personal choice and hobbies and delizji, but in reality it is nothing more than a vote in favour of shooting birds during the breeding season. This really is not about freedom of choice, about it being up to you and your choices being nobody else’s business, as the divorce referendum arguments were. This is another argument entirely: shooting birds during the breeding season is not a matter of personal choice and your own private business. It has a massive effect on conservation of the species, on the environment shared with everybody else.

A report in Times of Malta a couple of days later quoted “Labour Party insiders” as telling the newspaper that Joseph Muscat’s impromptu defence of spring-hunting during his usual Sunday speech was “an attempt at throwing a life-buoy to the faltering Yes campaign”. “The Yes campaign may have hit the panic button,” these Labour Party insiders told the newspaper. The result was that they brought out the big gun, the prime minister – not that he needed much telling. On Sunday Muscat made a clear attempt at splitting the vote along party lines, doing his best to undermine the Opposition leader’s strategy in declaring himself for the Yes vote by saying that Busuttil, no matter what he says, is secretly campaigning for the No vote. For once, he slipped up. Saying that actually helps Busuttil rather than making him look bad in the eyes of Nationalist Party supporters, most of whom – as the panic-inducing surveys show – are against shooting birds in the breeding season, and this not because it is a partisan choice (it obviously is not), but because the same surveys show that opposition to shooting in the breeding season is associated with a better standard of education, as is the pro-PN vote.

Muscat’s unscripted defence of spring hunting last Sunday struck many as odd, to the point where journalists asked him about it at his next public appearance. He said that there was nothing wrong in doing it, that it was the first time he had spoken about the subject during the campaign (but will there be more times?) and then he tried to reassure the ‘liberal and progressive’ people who he courts and flatters routinely, and who he has rubbed up the wrong way this time, by saying that he will close the spring hunting season early if there is law-breaking.

This does not impress many of those of us who will be voting No, and it shows that the prime minister does not understand the basis of our objection to shooting in the breeding season. It is not the law-breaking to which we object, but the law itself. Whether legal or illegal, shooting and trapping birds in the spring has a highly deleterious effect on the species. It is not only turtle-doves and quails which are affected by the shooting, but all other species. Put simply, hoopoes and golden orioles do not know that there is a law against shooting them. They hear guns, they pick up on the total absence of bird-calls and bird-song, and that’s it – they flee. Birds don’t know the law. They only know the sound of guns.

Is Muscat fighting this particular battle because he is mad keen on bird-killing, or because he gives a damn about hunters’ self-assumed rights? Not so – he’s joined the campaign because he can’t stand to lose any battle he fights. He’s concerned about his own personal image, about his self-image. He will see a No vote as the rejection of his personal choice by the majority, and that is deeply disturbing to him. He will read it as a weakening of his image, and that is exactly why he is working to align Labour voters with bird-killers – which, I have to say it, isn’t great at all for their image or that of the party.

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