When keeping secrets doesn’t fly

Just Words...

There is an illusion in this country that Cypriots can run airlines and that our politicians know the way around the Cyprus problem. They get the benefit of the doubt every time and every time they let us down.

Cyprus only seems to attract international attention when it fails spectacularly bad at something and is caught with its pants down in compromising positions.

We tend to brush it off as envious foreigners trying to do us down because Cyprus is small, weak and defenceless.

In another run-of-the-mill week in the lives of Cypriots there was; bitching about the proposed national health scheme not having any doctors, Turkey firing broadsides over the island’s energy search, Cyprus appearing on an OECD blacklist for allowing foreigners to avoid paying tax, an airline went belly up and the UN chief wondered where all the women and young people were in the peace process.

Without warning, the largest Cypriot airline Cobalt pulled down the shutters and told people not to bother turning up at an airport because nobody from the company would be there to help them. Cobalt was sorry for ruining your holiday, but it was left to the government to sort the mess out.

It was going to pay to fly people home, but anybody who has dealt with a government service knows the process would be painful and far from seamless.

But the authorities knew the airline was struggling and maybe could have intervened earlier to avoid a crash landing that hasn’t done Cyprus’ reputation any good as a holiday destination.

The lack of transparency from Cobalt when it was clearly suffering delays and cash flow problems is an example of the kind of secrecy private and public companies get away with far too often.

Ironically, low-cost carrier Cobalt rose from the flames of state-run Cyprus Airways which also sank under its own incompetence and mismanagement.

Despite what happened to the last Cypriot budget airline (the Helios disaster will always remain in the Cyprus psyche) the public was willing to give Cobalt a chance because it offered competitive prices to popular destinations.

But still, there was that nagging feeling whether it was safe and financially sound. It didn’t help matters with their teething problems in those early days with long flight delays. I endured a 15-hour delay on a summer 2016 flight due to a flat tyre and Cobalt couldn’t find a replacement until the next day.

Gradually, the airline i mproved its reputation and subsequent flights I experienced since then were satisfactory enough.

Nevertheless, Cobalt overreached itself, introducing an ambitious schedule without the fleet to match and even touted long-haul flights to China – how fanciful that seems now. It’s unclear who was making those decisions – the Chinese investors or the management?

Then the low-cost airline thought it would branch out into the business class sector – again what was that strategy based on? Cobalt seemed to be unsure of its own identity – was it a no-frills respectable airline or a high-flying serious contender for big-boy comforts.

There were also musical chairs within the company with a couple of CEOs getting the boot with no clear picture to the outside world who was leading the charge from the front. Again, this was another company trying to hide its dirty linen and pretend everything was hunky dory — a bit like what governments do when they have been found out, say as little as possible.

This is cold comfort to the thousands of tourists left stranded in Cyprus and abroad, it also leaves a credibility gap that will not be easy to bridge.

There is too much secrecy in Cyprus which is why companies and governments get away with trying to hoodwink us into a false sense of security.

Everybody is quite happy to look the other way for an easy life, which is why Cyprus is called out for its allegedly shady investment schemes (of course they are not) that thrive on telling people as little as possible.

Cypriots are told the bare minimum because it wouldn’t be in the national interest to divulge that as long as we are talking about the Cyprus problem it doesn’t actually get solved – everyone’s a winner.

Government is like a big corporate machine, the bad stuff gets shredded or filed under missing, we just become part of the profit margin.

When hiding information starts to become a habit then you are on that slippery path of trying to shut down dissenters which is why Saudi regime critic Jamal Khashoggi is most probably buried in bits somewhere.

Like many Cypriot missing, the truth is buried with him.