That's turtle dove in French, should Joseph Muscat wish to tweet about it. So the prime minister is going to vote in favour of shooting birds in spring. But then he never said he was an environmentalist. He merely courted the environmentalists' vote, and that is what they deduced for themselves because people will always hear what they want to hear and not what you are actually saying, or not saying.
Yes, Joseph Muscat courted the environmentalists' vote and then proceeded to ride roughshod over the proposals and desires of environmentalists, preferring instead to keep building speculators and hunters happy and content by wreaking destruction to the organisation at the planning and environment authority and doing his best to avoid committing on a spring hunting referendum until virtually forced to do so by the ruling of the Constitutional Court a few days ago.
When the prime minister spoke yesterday, his reasoning was garbled as often happens when people try to justify a stance they know they should not be taking. I don't think political parties should intervene in the spring hunting referendum, he said, but I will be voting to retain spring hunting. It's time for somebody to remind him that he is not a political party and saying how he plans to vote cannot in any way be construed as party invention in the matter.
The electorate expects the party leaders to say how they will vote, and it is their duty and obligation to tell us. Politicians are the only people whose vote should not be secret. They expect us to vote for them, we have voted for them, so it follows that they have to tell us how they vote. Consider all those Labour politicians who have refused to tell us how they voted in the European Union membership referendum 12 years ago: their self-preserving refusal is an insult to the electorate, and the biggest insult of all to those who voted for them.
Muscat told us that we shouldn't be surprised at his decision to vote for bird-shooting and trapping in spring "in view of his previous declarations and the mandate he was given". I'm not quite sure what he means about his mandate, given that several of the promises he made, or appeared to have made, were in conflict with each other. But no, I am not surprised at all, and this in view of everything he has ever said and done and not just his "previous declarations on the matter". The man is a bird-shooter personified, even though he doesn't shoot birds. "Bird-shooter" is a cipher here for a particular way of thinking.
The big test for him, of course, will come in parliament, as it did for all MPs who voted No in the EU membership and divorce referendums. If people vote to end spring hunting, how will he vote in parliament? Muscat said he will respect the will of the people, but we don't yet know what this means. "I do not sit on the fence," he said. But that doesn't make sense either. A referendum by definition forces you off the fence if you decide to vote. So unless this is a snide remark at Alfred Sant's proud failure to vote in the EU membership referendum - remember how he waved his voting document at us on television afterwards? - I can't see what Muscat means. I suppose he can always pretend to change his mind when it suits him personally, as he did with that particular referendum -campaigning for the No vote for five years, then voting No, then rushing to be first in line to buzz off to Brussels as a member of the European Parliament.
The most questionable thing the prime minister said is that he will allow a free vote. I hope he means in parliament, because the issue of a free vote simply does not come into play in a referendum. The party whip has power only within the House, and not in the polling booth. "Everyone is free to take his decisions," he said. Why, thank you, sir.
Of course, the fact that Joseph Muscat has decided to announce that he will vote in favour of spring hunting should give the Coalition Against Spring Hunting pause for thought. After his long and painfully embarrassing history of repeatedly backing the wrong horse, Muscat has taken the cynical approach of choosing his horses not on the basis of policy but on the basis of odds for victory. And though that is exactly the way you should choose a horse if you're gambling, it's not the way you should choose it if you're prime minister, when you are expected to stand for what you believe in rather than spread yourself about opportunistically.
Over to Simon Busuttil - and God help this island if he, too, decides that it is in his interest to say that he is voting for spring-hunting. He doesn't anybody as somebody who would be in favour of that, so he should just be true to himself and let the electorate do the rest. Civilised people need somebody to represent them in Malta.