There are times when Opposition Leader Alfred Sant seems to take the plunge into an issue, taking sides without apparently looking deeply into the subject, and ending up displeasing more people than he pleases.

It happened three times over the past week or two, and in each occasion Dr Sant might realise – now or later on – that he took the wrong approach and that a more careful analysis of the situation would have put him in a better place, politically-speaking, than he is now.

It started off with his reaction to the government’s decision to stop the spring hunting season with immediate effect, continued with his stand on the Valletta open-air market issue, and finished with his speaking about the need for a second golf course days after the government had announced that the matter had been put aside and that a natural and history park would take its place.

Let’s start with hunting. Dr Sant criticised the government’s decision to end the spring season with immediate effect following reports of illegal hunting, saying that the government first boasted it had increased its monitoring and surveillance but then was unable to exercise control. He therefore hinted that a Labour government would not have acted the way the government did.

Such a reaction must have pleased the hunters’ lobby. Dr Sant must have worked out that there are more “Nationalist” hunters who are likely to vote Labour to preserve their hobby than there are “Labour” environmentalists who will vote Nationalist because of the position taken by the government. That may be true, but Dr Sant must also know that Malta is being watched closely by the European Commission on this issue, and that in the long term rules will have to be followed.

This issue reminded many of Dr Sant’s promise, before the 1996 election, to remove Value Added Tax, a position that helped the Malta Labour Party in no small way to win that time round. We all know what happened afterwards, when VAT was removed, yes, but was replaced by another form of taxation.

On the monti issue, Dr Sant said that a Labour government would have left the hawkers where they were a month ago.

Again, Dr Sant’s position must have pleased the 115 hawkers who were at the time locked in a dispute with the government. But this was a short-sighted approach to the situation, as Dr Sant completely disregarded the wishes of the Valletta business community – which were very much in line with that of the government – and did not grasp the issue in its entirety, that is the comprehensive plan to give a much-needed new lease of life to the capital city.

Then, days after the government had announced that the plan to have a golf course in the northwest of Malta had been shelved to make way for a natural and history park, Dr Sant, while saying that it was what Labour had always wanted, once again brought up the golf course issue by saying that Malta needs a second golf course when he visited the one at Marsa.

We all know that so far any plans for having a second golf course have been vociferously opposed and that every time the matter has been publicly brought up, the idea had to be put aside because of such opposition. By saying that a second golf course is needed – at a time when the government decided otherwise – Dr Sant might have scored a few points with the tourism industry, but lost many others too.

Dr Sant should be more careful in what he says. He should analyse the situations in their entirety before expressing support to any given cause. He may gain the applause of some sectors in the short-term, but is probably not making headway with the rest. In the months leading to an election, these are risks that the MLP cannot take.