By Anthony O. Miller
THE BOARD that runs the government-owned Philoxenia Hotel, threadbare from years of neglect, wants to close it in March, and that could occur before the government can sell it, thanks to a straight-jacket that the House of Representatives passed into law.
The problem arose, Commerce Minister Nicos Rolandis explained yesterday, when the hotel supervisory board last year asked the Council of Ministers to underwrite £1.9 million in repairs and renovations.
The Cabinet declined because, while the state legally owned the hotel and the adjacent International Conference Centre, there was no semi- governmental organisation or company with a board of directors “under whose umbrella they come,” Rolandis said.
The Cabinet wanted such an “umbrella” before paying for any fix-up. The House obliged, Rolandis said, passing a law allowing creation of “a company limited by shares, which will take over these properties,” thus clarifying their legal status.
Enter the straight-jacket:
While the House allowed creating a share-based company – as in the case of the government-owned Nicosia Hilton Hotel – it denied the government (which would have been the company’s sole share-holder) the right to sell any of the company’s shares. Moreover, Rolandis added, the House insisted no share sale could occur without its approval.
Rejected by President Clerides, the bill was amended in the House. The new bill still barred the government from selling any of the company’s shares. “But they changed it, so that not even with their approval, will sale of the shares of this company be possible,” Rolandis said.
Clerides had to sign this amended law, Rolandis said, because, despite its obvious fettering language, Attorney-general Alecos Markides could not find anything unconstitutional about it. “So the law has been signed now, and this is the position.”
Rolandis did not deny that, at this point, the House had bound the entire question of the Philoxenia, the Conference Centre, the company, the shares, their sale, and any renovations to the threadbare hotel, solidly in ice.
But “this paradox” remains, he said: “The government is the owner of this company… (but) cannot do what any owner of property can do: sell the property… We are deprived of this right.”
“So I have to take the case to the Council of Ministers in the light of this recent decision of the House of Representatives, and we shall decide what to do,” he said.
“Now, the supervisory board of the hotel, taking into account the (deteriorating) situation there… has, itself, recommended that we suspend the operation as of the first of March next year,” Rolandis said.
“I believe that the whole matter will be determined by the Council of Ministers probably sometime in January. In the meantime, I think it will remain open” until next March.
