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Bird shooting is a hotly debated controversial subject in Malta with opposing sides that are not prepared to move an inch from their entrenched positions. So when the Nationalist Government finalised its position during the EU accession negotiations, the compromise solution that sought to find a balance between two opposing sides of our population ended up as all good compromises do – i.e. by being refused by both sides.
During the interview that was then reported in the May2 issue of MaltaToday, Kurt Sansone asked me for my views on the fact that the hunters’ were going to have their own candidate in the forthcoming EP elections.
I argued that in the remote chance of the hunting lobby electing their own MEP, this lone representative would be on the fringe of the fringe of the European Parliament and would certainly not be in a position to improve the hunters’ cause. On the other hand, my reasoning went, MEPs elected in the interest of the PN (unlike those of AD) are committed to maintain the present laws on bird-shooting (including the compromise on spring hunting) and therefore it would well be in the shooters’ interests to vote for PN candidates.
This argument provoked a number of malicious spins and lies from those who want a complete ban on bird-shooting, viz: Arnold Cassola on Bondi+ (PBS May 4) claimed that I had said that the PN is the natural party for bird-shooters. Clearly this is completely false; John Ripard (MaltaToday May 9) claimed that I want to pamper the bird-shooting lobby in all they want and even facetiously implied that I condone “the continued massacre of marsh harriers, bee eaters, swans, swallows and indeed anything that flies..” The claim that I or the PN condone the illegal shooting of protected species of birds is, of course, patently false; Franco Farrugia (MaltaToday May 9) who is unable to conceal his illogical bias against me personally (a bias that has nothing to do with bird-shooting), used his blatant misinterpretation of what I argued to claim that I have convinced him to vote Alternattiva...as if he was not going to vote that way in any case!
My argument was simply an attempt at dispassionately analysing the voting options from a bird-shooter’s point of view. I don’t expect everybody to agree with this analysis, but these three reactions all went off hopelessly at a tangent. This makes me suspect that my analysis was not as superficial and simplistic as some might have thought.
By the way, I am not a bird-shooter and, personally, do not like bird-shooting at all – not even the legal variety of it. However, once a compromise on this issue was found, I do not see why I should not accept it.
I actually respect other people’s choices, even when I do not agree with them - although I am not surprised that this would be beyond the likes of Mr Franco Farrugia.
Michael Falzon A&CE
PN MEP candidate
Naxxar
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