Lillikas comes up trumps again, this time with CyTA

A LOT of nonsense is being said by politicians, trade unionists and others about the issue of the privatisation of semi-governmental organisations (SGOs). As always, demagoguery and populism are the means through which this very serious problem for the country is being faced. They have learnt nothing from what has happened to us.
The issue, in the last few days, has been restricted to CyTA with all the candidates and parties declaring their strident opposition to its privatisation, believing that in this way they will secure the votes of its employees. Two of the presidential candidates – Anastasiades and Lillikas – say they would accept CyTA becoming a public company and propose that some of the shares be given to its employees and some to the state.
The ‘clever’ proposals do not end there. Lillikas has suggested that the state remained the main shareholder, but the management be given to private interests. EDEK, of which he is the candidate, has staked a claim as the owner of the idea of issuing shares, but believes the state should maintain control of the new company. Meanwhile Malas, as the hostage of the AKEL leadership, does not want to hear of privatisations.
It would be interesting for someone to explain to us what the difference is between privatisation and ‘share issue’ (or metochopiisis). There is only one way for CyTA to be privatised, either fully or partially. It must become a public limited company, issue share capital and offer it to potential buyers. So privatisation and metochopiisis go together. If it is not being sold what is the point of a share issue?
We can only conclude that our politicians, once again, are opening their mouths and uttering nonsense, having no clue what they are talking about. The most absurd of the suggestions were by Lillikas and EDEK. No individual would invest in CyTA if the majority of shares were owned by the state. What lunatic would buy shares in a company, which would be run by the government, and already has operating costs three times those of a private company? In effect they want to impose the model that has bankrupted Cyprus Airways, which nobody wants to invest in now.
I was very surprised to hear that even former president George Vassiliou, a successful and knowledgeable businessman, believed “the state could maintain control even if it did not have the majority of the shares.” I would like to ask him if he would be prepared to invest even one hundred euros in a company that would be run by the state.
The man who stole the show was EDEK vice-chairman Marinos Sizopoulos, who unearthed ‘national reasons’ that prohibited the privatisation of CyTA – it provided services to the National Guard. That’s a cute fairy-tale. Is he suggesting that Greece’s armed forces will close down now that the country’s telecommunications company OTE has been privatised? Will the private owners be passing on all Greece’s military secrets to Ankara now? Am I wrong in despairing with our politicians?
Among the fiercest critics of privatisation are, inevitably, the board and unions of CyTA, the people who will lose their positions and their super-privileges. Chairman Stathis Kittis underlined that the board was opposed to privatisations irrespective of whether the debt would be viable or not.
“We must not slaughter CyTA. CyTA is not five corner-shops,” he said. In other words the state can go bankrupt but CyTA must remain as it is with Kittis as its chairman.
Kittis, the unions, the AKEL leadership and many others, do not seem to have understood how deep in trouble we are. The country is collapsing and in effect we are bankrupt. We should be prepared to ‘slaughter’ not just one CyTA, but 10 if we had them, in order to survive.

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