David Lindsay
With just a few weeks remaining until the spring hunting season is due to open, the Malta Federation of Hunters, Trappers and Conservationists (FKNK) delivered an ultimatum yesterday that if the season is not opened as anticipated this spring, it would stop advising its members to abide by the law.
Speaking yesterday, FKNK secretary general Lino Farrugia observed how he had always been the first and most adamant that Maltese hunters should abide by the law of the land.
However, he added, if the rules were changed come spring, he would cease giving such advice – a veiled ultimatum that hunters would be given a free rein by the FKNK to hunt in a closed season.
“I have always been the first to say ‘abide by the law’, but if the law is changed in such a way that spring hunting is not allowed, I would no longer tell our members to abide by the law,” Mr Farrugia told The Malta Independent on Sunday after the meeting.
Farrugia was speaking yesterday afternoon in Victoria, Gozo at the first of two meetings organised by the FKNK, the second of which is being held today in Rabat, Malta. Yesterday’s turnout of a few hundred people was smaller than had been expected, but today’s meeting in Malta is expected to draw larger crowds.
Speaking before a banner of the Maltese flag with the superimposed text: “EU/Hunters’ treaty is based on betrayal and misrepresentation of material facts rendering it null and void; EU do not use your tiniest member State to send messages to other member States”, Mr Farrugia accused the EU of doing just that.
He also quoted EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas as having said he was “using Malta as an example to send a message to other EU member States”.
“Brussels,” he said, “had no idea what traditional Maltese hunting and trapping is all about, and is now using Malta as an excuse to suit its own purposes.”
Also in the FKNK’s line of fire yesterday was former Ornis committee chairman Joe Sultana, himself a former hunter, and Saviour Balzan, who had negotiated Malta’s EU accession package in terms of the Birds Directive.
Mr Sultana, Mr Farrugia said, was a traitor to Maltese and Gozitan hunters, while Mr Balzan was a traitor to the entire Maltese and Gozitan population.
Mr Farrugia called on the Prime Minister to “interrogate” Mr Balzan over the money he had earned as Malta’s negotiator, and that, as evidenced by later newspaper articles penned by Mr Balzan, he had clearly never intended negotiating the retention of spring hunting.
Malta, Mr Farrugia said, had negotiated 77 special arrangements with the EU in its accession treaty, and that the retention of spring hunting had been one of them.
He questioned, now that the EU was bringing Malta before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over the practice, whether the EU could also now retract its agreements with Malta on issues such as property and abortion.
He also questioned why the EU was attacking one of these 77 “special arrangements”, and questioned the future of the other 77 arrangements.
It was BirdLife, or as Mr Farrugia put it, Birdlies, which had ensured Malta was being brought before the ECJ over spring hunting, and that Alternattiva Demokratika had assisted it.
Both parties, he said, were doing their utmost to ensure the practices of both hunting and trapping were completely abolished on the Maltese Islands.
Environment Minister George Pullicino was also singled out as an accomplice to BirdLife and other like-minded organisation such as Nature Trust, which Mr Farrugia said, had been given land and money belonging to the Maltese and Gozitan populations to further their agendas.
Yesterday’s meeting provided a contrast to last year’s debacle in Valletta, in which the crowd’s enthusiasm degenerated into violence and antagonism towards journalists present. The crowd was mostly calm and observed the strict guidelines stipulated by the FKNK before the meeting.