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As controversial as she was, Margaret Thatcher’s greatest legacy is undoubtedly her determination to excel and her extreme sense of patriotism. She transformed a labour-intensive economy that was destined for doom to an entrepreneurial society that enjoyed unprecedented growth, she reformed and privatised the underproductive utilities and transformed a greater part of the public into stakeholders, she provided the concept of home ownership to hundreds of thousands of council residents, who then capitalised on their mortgages to fund their small businesses, the cornerstone of the British economy today.
What, then, should Mr. Anastasiades learn from Baroness Thatcher, a true inspiration for the 80s and 90s generations of entrepreneurs?
First and foremost: fear no one, least of all the blood-sucking trade unions that are so entrenched into our Cypriot culture that no politician dares to challenge their hegemony. This is why we could not lower public spending all these years that has brought us to the current economic demise. This is why no one dares call the bluff of the Cyprus Airways staff who have rollicked in endless benefits, when the airline should have closed down ages ago. This is why civil servants, bank employees and teachers look at their watches, eager to go home to a secure paycheck, with no one telling them anything about a sense of duty to the community.
President Anastasiades has been given a grace period of 40 days, as much as a mourner needs to overcome a tragic loss. The loss in this case was the criminal inheritance from a five-year incompetent communist administration that has demolished the entrepreneurial spirit of every Cypriot. Scorched earth indeed.
Now is the time for Mr Anastasiades to push through the immediate privatisation of all productive and profitable services, so that Cyprus can once again regain its competitiveness in the international business scene. All others should be shut down to contain further losses on the private-sector taxpayer who is the only one carrying the heavy burden of the ECB-sanctioned austerity bailout.
Taking a page out of the Iron Lady’s workbook, the President should also “kindly ask” that all quango presidents tender their resignations and be replaced by younger and more dynamic leaders to take the semi-government organisations and boards into a new age of dynamism, challenge and maybe even confrontation. The telco Cyta should be headed by a thirty-something Internet whizz kid, the EAC needs a solar operator at its helm and the Cyprus Tourism Organisation must have a chairperson from among the ranks of the most successful salespeople from the travel industry, preferably a woman who can drive a bargain much better than her male counterparts.
The experiment of subsidising the low-cost airlines such as Ryanair and Easyjet was a miserable failure. If the Flying Moufflon cannot handle the competition and is dead against giving up the few monopolies it has left, then perhaps it should be replaced by another airline that is willing to sell seats and promote Cyprus to attract the ‘quality tourism’ golden egg that was never hatched.
So, Mr Anastasiades. Roll up your sleeves and get down to work. Mrs Thatcher would expect nothing less from you.
And while you’re at it, how about finding a central banker that really wants the economy to prosper and grow, and not be strangled by the stupid credit controls imposed by the ECB that no-one in the Central Bank of Cyprus dares to challenge.
