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During a recent meeting of economists who compile the Financial Mirror Quarterly Survey, one of the questions that came up was “can things improve with a change in government?” Perhaps the question ought to have been: “can things get any worse?”
The haphazard way with which the full privatization of Cyprus Airways has been discussed shows, once again, that this government is directionless and simply reacting to events, as opposed to staying ahead of events and taking a lead at a time when people are looking up to their politicians for reassurance.
The same recipe with the unfortunate demise of Eurocypria will be reheated and served to the unknowing public who has been duped to thinking that maintaining a national carrier is a necessity nowadays.
What should have happened at the time was to see where the state where wrong with the charter operator (and its mismanagement) and, learning from those mistakes, restructure the Flying Moufflon to adapt to the current market needs. Instead, the flag carrier of the state that will host the presidency of the EU Council in the second half of 2012 decided to terminate the flight to the capital of Europe, Brussels. It has since resumed the flights but has already lost market share to rival operators.
The communist party and President Christofias have always opposed privatisation or even liberalisation for fear of losing their voter base by saying that these actions would lead straight into the hands of the evil capitalists. It had even opposed during the previous administration, of which it was a coalition partner, the corporatisation of public services such as Cyta, the EAC, the Post Office, etc. Now, the communist-led government is acting in a most capitalist fashion and selling off land assets (Qatar joint venture), has set up companies (energy distributor DEFA), plans to sell casino licenses and is about to auction off as many of the available offshore blocks to gas and oil prospectors.
Why the turnaround? Is it because of genuine concern for the economy? Had that been the case, then this administration would have cut long ago back on its enormous public sector payroll that is costing taxpayers dearly. During negotiations with the almighty public sector trade union, the Finance Minister politely asked them if civil servants would be courteous enough to put in extra hours during the 6-month EU Council Presidency, without additional pay. Has the Minister not heard of such terms as “no work, no pay”?
This is not good capitalist behaviour and if the government has not decided which economic model to follow, then it should make up its mind quickly. This confusion is simply leading to further deterioration of what little credibility Cyprus still has.
