This time last week, Standard Publications launched a new portal. While we hope you are enjoying our new piece of machinery, we also draw our readers' attention to a new tool that we have incorporated into our product, and that is our new online poll.
The aim of our polls is to allow our users to voice their opinion on specific issues and questions that we may put to you. It also allows us to extract our users' opinions and storify them for print so readers can gauge their peers' opinions on matters.
Our first poll concerned the spring hunting referendum. TMI online asked whether readers agreed, disagreed or did not care whether a referendum should on spring hunting should be held next year.
The majority of our readers - 84.8% - believe that a referendum should be held next year. 9.33% disagree and 5.87% do not care. This newspaper has taken a stand with two other newspapers, The Times and Malta Today, where all three have declared their support for the referendum to be held next year.
On 20 September, the government suspended the autumn hunting season, following a spate of illegal hunting incidents. The season is set to reopen tomorrow. The issue has become tricky after Maltese citizens signed enough petitions to call for a referendum to be held on the matter. However, hunters also collected signatures to safeguard the rights of minority groups and many people signed that petition inadvertently.
Moreover, the original collection is now in the hands of the courts which have to decide on the matter. As things stands, the hunters filed an objection to the courts - as it is in their rights to do - and that will take up more time.
It is becoming increasingly clear that while the outcome of the vote is far from certain, the majority of people in Malta want this referendum to take place and they want it to happen next year.
The people have exercised their Constitutional right to demand a referendum on the matter and the courts are duty bound to process the matter as quickly as possible and give a decision, whether it is Aye or Nay.
Hunting has been used as a political football for far too long and the lobby itself has always exerted influence on both the major parties. Over the years, both have had a mixture of pandering to the lobby, as well as tricking it. But as things stand, the status quo has remained. Over the past years, incidents of illegal hunting have continued to increase, as has the violence that goes with it when hunters take the law into their own hands. It is time to let the people of Malta and Gozo decide.