The partial privatization of TAP or the persistence of error

The government announces that it will privatize TAP to less than 50%. I already suspected this would happen. The deal will go badly because no sensible capitalist would want to be a minority shareholder in a government like the Portuguese one, and any interested parties who eventually appear, knowing this, will put forward weak proposals, frightened by the government's intention to maintain a strong position in management, immediately appointing key managers to guarantee what it calls "strategic" interests for the national economy. TAP is and will continue to be a public company, as such defined by its capital and management.

There was no other way to expect it. The government says it wants, but doesn't want, the full privatization of TAP. Costa should feel reassured. Will the government continue to be influenced by the socialist creed of maintaining the state's central role in a "strategic" company, as Costa advocated? Not at all. The reason is much simpler. The government wants to continue using TAP as a hunting ground. Personally, I have no illusions. What the government intends is to continue turning TAP into an employment agency for party clients and friends, seizing the opportunity to, under the pretext of privatization, remove those still there and install new ones. TAP is a sinecure for party-based clientele interests. Nothing more. The choice is clear. Putative directors, your turn will come.

To justify this solution, the government is throwing dust in our eyes. It claims that this partial privatization is just the first step in a full privatization that will one day come. It claims there are many interested parties, which is obviously a lie given the conditions under which it will be carried out, and claims that the hundreds of millions spent on it will be recouped. None of this is true.

This attempt to make fools of the Portuguese has its limits. Let's see. Conducting a piecemeal privatization is not a recommended solution. Privatizing only 49% is detrimental to the interests of the government itself, or rather, the taxpayers, because potential interested parties will offer a low price to compensate for their inferior position, especially since they don't know whether the government will privatize the rest and are justifiably suspicious that it will. Hence, there aren't many interested parties, contrary to what the government would have us believe. I even get the impression that there truly aren't any, and if there are, they'll want to buy cheap.

The government also claims it wants to recover the hundreds of millions wasted on TAP. This is another illusion. How can the government be certain, or even certain, that it will recover them if it sells the company under conditions that are disadvantageous to potential buyers? It's clear it won't recover anything. That's why it has already stated in the media it controls that recovering those astronomical sums will be "difficult." Of course it is. Where would it get them? From the money that TAP's potential buyer would shell out? The government already knows that selling is cheap.

TAP, as everyone knows, has been technically bankrupt for a long time. No one disputes that buying TAP could be attractive to foreign companies, since no one in our country has nearly enough capital to do so. But any interested party would only buy it at a bargain price. And then, if, on top of that, it were to be removed from its financial and strategic control, even worse. In other words, only a fool would buy it, and if they do, it would be very cheap.

TAP is not just a public company. It is clear proof of the Portuguese political regime's incapacity. Combined with ideological prejudice against full privatization and government incompetence, the way to deal with this situation is to try to buy time and deceive the Portuguese people. This is the only way successive governments have been skilled. How can they buy time? I bet a series of "technical" and "monitoring" committees will be appointed to delay the privatization process. A committee, as everyone knows, is a group of individuals appointed to study a subject they know little or nothing about, only to conclude that it is already too late to do anything about it. This basic truth is more evident in our country than anywhere else. But committees are always incredibly useful for securing clientele. It almost seems like everyone already knows who will be on them.

Meanwhile, the poor taxpayers are there and will be waiting for notification from the tax authorities to pay, as always. The cancer that is the nationalized TAP is and will always be waiting for the Portuguese taxpayer.

The only solution is to privatize TAP completely and all at once through a transparent and open international public tender, or to sell it on the stock exchange. This is the only way to obtain a reasonable price and relieve the Portuguese taxpayer of this carcinogenic burden that is a nationalized TAP.