  The subject of this work is the analysis of hadronic decays of the exotic
meson $\pi_{1}$ in a fully relativistic formalism, and comparison with the
nonrelativistic results. The relativistic spin wave functions of mesons and
hybrids are constructed based on unitary representations of the Lorentz group.
The radial wave functions are obtained from phenomenological considerations of
the mass operator. We find that the decay channels $\pi b_{1}$ and $\pi f_{1}$
are favored, in agreement with the results obtained using other models, thus
indicating some model independence of the S+P selection rules.
