Everybody seems to have had his say about the referendum result and all attention is now on the local counil election results.

After the carcades with shades of ISIS and boughs tied to cars, after the rants of people on Facebook and elsewhere ashamed to be Maltese because the hunters had won, after the fingers pointed at the Prime Minister and/or both leaders together for saying they would vote Yes, and after the mainly negative coverage in the foreign press, we still have not analysed the result and the outcome in detail.

I think we have to go back a rather long way to begin to analyse last week’s vote.

Some years ago, under the PN administration, in a bid to further the spread, as we saw it, of real democracy, someone came up with the idea of introducing abrogative referenda, that is a referendum called for by public acclaim to reverse a law approved by Parliament.

Now that was not being exactly fair. For if our system were to really try to be more fair and democratic, we would not place such insurmountable obstacles in the way of smaller parties trying to get in national politics. It is true that in other countries there are minimum entry levels such as a five per cent vote. But in our case, we have put the barriers so high that no small and new party can overcome them. You would need to get a full quota from one district to claim your seat.

Anyway, the idea was that we emulate the Swiss in allowing frequent popular consultation, aka referenda about which we hear every so often. But as far as I could see, the Swiss have referenda all the time but they do not have abrogative referenda.

The concept of abrogative referenda seems to have come from Italy (and perhaps the big ideological battles on divorce and abortion in the 1970s and 1980s should have served as a warning).

Dr Giulia Aravantinou Leonidi, from the University of Rome La Sapienza, wrote: “The main instrument of direct democracy in Italy, however, is the abrogative referendum by which 500,000 voters, or five regional councils, can seek the partial or total repeal of a law or laws, or measures having force of law. Compared with the experience of other countries, in which the referendum device received much attention – such as Switzerland or the United States, just to quote the democracies in which the referendum instrument has had a renowned fortune – the Italian abrogative referendum experience should be considered as one of the most significant, both that they can be called by a popular request signed by citizens and also in terms of the numbers of questions put by the referendum.

“Beginning in the late 70s and continuing through all the 21st century, the referendum has undoubtedly been an important part of the Italian political and constitutional life.”

Between January 1995 and June 2005, Swiss citizens voted 31 times to answer 103 questions (during the same period, French citizens participated in only two referendums). The most frequent themes are healthcare, taxes, welfare, drug policy, public transport, immigration, asylum and education.

Our law drafters and political masters may not have thought the matter out fully or we would not have ended up in this mess.

On paper, the Spring Hunting Referendum may have looked like it aimed to reverse a law or legal provision, but actually it intended to do something that no abrogative referendum has ever attempted to do: it aimed to curtail or remove a right, pretended right, assumed right of a part of the country. It aimed at installing a dictatorship by the majority over the minority.

When I went to vote, I could see that people whose pastime is hunting had brought all their family to vote – wives, children, mothers-in-law, the lot. The result was entirely predictable.

Coupled to this, of course, was an inept No campaign which put off many who would have wanted to vote No, an overweening reading of polls that said the No vote was winning, and come Saturday many would-be No voters found they had other things to do.

Even so, the margin was very thin – 2,220 votes or so. Prime Minister Muscat, who comes from a hunting community, did not mince words after the result was known: the hunters had got away with it by a very slender margin (“bi sbrixx”). I cannot imagine what would have been the outcome on the streets, had the No vote won.

There was, as I see it, an unremitting drive towards the referendum by those who must have thought it was to be a shove-in. I do not know how the Swiss referendum system works (as far as I can see it is handled by the federal government), nor the Italian system which I believe is organized by grass roots but I am sure that in any country the proposers of a citizen initiative would first seek a dialogue with the other side rather than attempt the popular bulldozing vote tactic.

Then the parties ran scared, as they have done over the past years, when the threat of hunters’ votes going against them would be enough to silence them. They left the field to the grass roots organisers and, by doing so, shirked their duty and responsibility.

Many misinterpreted Dr Busuttil’s decision to say he would vote Yes thinking it was just a strategic move to counter Dr Muscat’s similar and prior announcement. But actually the derogation was the result of negotiation between the PN government and the European Commission before Accession, an agreement which had already been approved by the people of Malta in the Accession Referendum in 2003 and confirmed by the election held a month later.

If anything changed after that, if any party had second thoughts, or if Malta was about to face charges because no other country has such a derogation, that would have been a matter for the government to tackle. Certainly, trying to subvert existing legislation and international agreement by a grass roots vote is not the normal way in which a democracy is run.

It is one thing to use the instrument of popular consultation and grass roots legislative proposal, and it is another thing to allow the majority to impose on the minority.

Having said all this, I voted No because I cannot stomach the idea of killing birds that stop on this island on their way to the north to breed. Subsequent events last week have shown that some of the hunters do not seem to have any idea what bird they shoot at. If it’s a bird they shoot first and ask questions later.

This referendum has polarized the country in a way that the political parties should have averted and dealt with rather than let the contenders fight it out. All of us are the losers, including the birds.

The abrogative referendum facility is now dead in the water. I doubt if anyone at any time will have any niggling temptation to use it again. Not for a very long time.