And so it begins.  Following Friday's decision by the Constitutional Court that the long-awaited referendum on spring hunting can go ahead, the government yesterday announced that the referendum to abolish the highly contentious practice will be held on 11 April - just before the prospective opening of the spring season.

And while this means that the country may not see another spring hunting season - should the referendum to exterminate the dubious practice once and for all pass - is entirely welcome, the Prime Minister's declaration yesterday evening that he will vote against the referendum and that he is in favour of retaining the spring hunt is not quite so welcome, to say the very least.

The Prime Minister should have used yesterday's occasion to attempt to depoliticise what has become a heavily politicised issue.  But instead he did quite the opposite.

Nor should the opposition enter the fray and, theoretically, take the opposing stance of supporting the referendum.  Two wrongs never make a right and the opposition would do well to stay out of the debate altogether, lest it is to risk even more deeply politicising the issue. 

The adoption of such a stance by the opposition could, after all, induce a disastrous referendum result should the electorate eventually feel compelled to vote along the lines of political allegiances, and we would end up with a result similar to that of the last general election.

We call on both the government and the opposition to steer clear of pronouncing themselves either for or against the referendum - and to leave the issue up to the people, and the people alone, to decide upon.

And while the opposition has cried foul over the fact that the government, and not the President of the Republic, has set the date of what will be an abrogative referendum, one which seeks to render a legislative instrument null and void, our own legal sources have confirmed that the government is quite within its rights at law to do so.

But this does not mean that it is correct.  A referendum date and the exact question to be asked should not be matters for the government, which is in essence a political party, to decide.  The issue of a referendum goes over and above political considerations.  A referendum requested by the people as in this case needs to be raised above the political sphere and placed in the hands of the President of the Republic, and the laws governing the current set up are in dire need of revamping.

A referendum called by the people is a sacrosanct right of the people and politicians have no business whatsoever to meddle in the way in which it is held.  This newspaper is of the distinct opinion that the workings of the referendum should have ideally been placed directly in the hands of the President, who is, these days, above the political fray and who serves the people and only the people.

Having said that the fact that the country now faces the very real possibility of once and for all reclaiming the spring countryside, which has been made the sole domain of hunters for years on end, is extremely positive news.

This newspaper, along with The Times of Malta and MaltaToday, had recently announced an unprecedented joint stance in favour of the referendum calling for an end to the spring hunt, and for that referendum to be held this spring.  As such, our campaign in favour of abolishing the spring hunting season will be stepped in the very near future so watch this space.

There are several arguments against the practice of spring hunting and they have been aired ceaselessly over recent years, but what it all boils down to at the end of the day is: birds, whether protected or not, should never be shot down while migrating to their spring breeding grounds. By doing so, every bird shot will not make it to its breeding grounds to replenish its species.

This simple rationale should make sense not only to environmentalists and ornithologists, but to hunters themselves.

The question here is not about the illegal hunting of protected species, but, rather, about the advisability of hunting Malta's legal quarry during their breeding season.

The birds migrating over Malta are not Malta's birds - they are the common property of Africa, where they winter, and Europe, where they summer. They simply fly over Malta en route. Many of those species are endangered and many of those sit stuffed in households across the country.

The predominance of hunting protected species has, unfortunately, cast the practice of hunting, even in autumn, in an even poorer light, and it has given law-abiding hunters something of an undeserved stigma.

Hunters, in a way, have every reason to feel slighted: they were fed a string of untruths before the EU membership referendum all those years ago, and they were perhaps lulled into a false sense of security after the current, and indeed past governments, appeared to have bent over backwards to appease the hunting lobby in return for votes.

After years of the festering spring hunting issue, after the European Commission eventually hauled Malta before the European Courts of Justice, after so many years of citizens being deprived of their countryside in spring - arguably nature's most stunning season in Malta - and after the deluge of bad press Malta attracts every year, it is now time for the voices of the Maltese people themselves to be heard - and not the voices of hunters, politicians or diehard environmentalists.

The people must be heard and the only way for them to be heard is through this referendum and they should be able to express their opinions entirely free of political pressure.  If politicians need to express their opinions, they should do so at the ballot box like everyone else.

It is, after all, the people of Malta as a whole that bears the brunt of Malta's insistence on spring hunting, for the sake of what is in reality a minority of the population - on an issue that has nothing to do with civil rights but, rather, a perceived right which is, really and truly, a wrong.

Hunters have time and time again taken exception to what they described as 'collective punishment', such as when the government temporarily closed last autumn's hunting season in reaction to the persistence of illegal hunting - i.e. the unscrupulous shooting of protected species.

It is now high time that the rest of Malta's citizens stop being 'collectively punished' for the actions of what is, in reality, a small segment of the population.