UPDATED/David Thake to stay on air throughout the general election campaign

UPDATED: I have just received a telephone call from Ann Fenech, in her capacity as President of the Nationalist Party’s executive council. David Thake is staying on air throughout the general election campaign and that decision will not be reversed.

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I can’t believe we’re about to have this conversation again. They took him off the radio last year and were faced with uproar and protests from everyone they met.

Now, in the thick of a brief 30-day electoral campaign, just when they need him most – and the rest of us need him for a daily dose of sanity and a voice and attitude to which we can relate – they’re planning to reach a decision today on whether to take Thake off the air again.

Because we can’t have the other candidates complaining, can we? Ma tarax. Thake has to do house visits like the rest of them. Let’s leave aside the fact that he’s more useful on radio, reaches more people, and that we want to listen to him and not to some idiot talking rot for two hours straight while playing music.

I’m going to write this in capital letters, perhaps it will get through: THE WHOLE POINT OF HAVING A PARTY-OWNED RADIO STATION IS TO USE IT TO YOUR BEST ADVANTAGE. IF YOUR BEST ADVANTAGE IS AN ELECTORAL CANDIDATE, AND THE LETTER OF YOUR STUPID LAW TELLS YOU ‘NO CANDIDATES ON THE RADIO EXCEPT BY ROSTER’, DITCH THE STUPID LAW NOT YOUR TACTICAL ADVANTAGE.

The Labour Party would kill to have the equivalent of David Thake on its own radio station, but it hasn’t got anyone of that calibre. The Nationalist Party has him and they’re going to put this special weapon back in the weapons cupboard because the war has started.

We want to listen to David Thake. And if you take a bad decision on this one – a decision that panders to your internal rules, structures and candidates rather than working out what’s best for the party itself and therefore, in this crucial election, for the country – then people will call all your decision-making skills into question on this basis of this alone.

Leave Thake on air. Other people can do house visits who are hopeless on radio. That’s the way division of labour works: we do what we’re best at.