On Saturday, the whole of Malta is being asked to vote in a referendum on spring hunting, while half of the country is being asked to vote to elect local councils for the next four years.

It is the second time since 2011 that Malta is being tasked with deciding on a national issue via a vote. Four years ago, Malta had the question of divorce before it, and more than half the population had then voted in favour of introducing this civil right.

On 11 April, another historic decision will be taken – will Malta stick to tradition and allow spring hunting to continue, or will we, once and for all, stop the annual massacre of birds as they travel north to breed?

The referendum has been in the making for years. Signatures were first collected to raise the 10 per cent necessary to force a vote; the matter was then contested in court by the hunters, who tried to create as many obstacles as possible in order to preserve their hobby. But the environmentalist group pushing for the referendum persisted, and we are now on the eve of making up our collective mind.

It has been a strange campaign, one that probably did not serve much to convince the indifferent people either way. Both the “yes” and “no” campaigns brought nothing new to the debate, and concentrated mostly on the “defects” of the other side. They were both preaching to the converted. They set out to persuade those for whom hunting is not an issue, and my reading of it is that neither camp has been successful in swaying the balance in their favour.

Both sides have erred in their campaign. The hunters have tried to give the impression that, really and truly, they are environmentalists at heart. This could not be further from the truth. Their attempt to pull the people’s heart-strings by speaking about their voluntary work in our countryside and in remote villages in Africa will never change the fact that they kill birds just for the fun of it. Their arrogance will only increase if the ‘yes’ vote prevails.

The anti-hunting group chose the wrong people to pass on their message. People who are generally disliked or are unknown to the general population did not serve the purpose. If anything, they pushed people to the other side or, at best, helped them decide not to vote. Indifference could be the greatest adversary for the ‘no’ camp, and the fact that more than 60,000 votes have remained uncollected so far is not a good indication for the environmentalists.

What clearly emerged in this campaign is that we have a bunch of extremists on one side fighting a battle against another bunch of extremists on the other side.

It did not help either cause.