28 August 2008

The stricken Alitalia

Yesterday I made some declarations to the press agencies on the Alitalia situation. I have tackled the issue in different articles on this blog, that you will find links to at the bottom of this post.

The Alitalia issue represents a colossal fraud that at times during these sad months for the company has bordered on the illegal, as ell as causing to plummet the already hardly rosy image of this country to the lowest ever. You will remember that I defined the interference of Silvio Berlusconi on the Air France - Alitalia negotiations as a true act of insider trading.

During the election campaign, Silvio Berlusconi promised to put the flagship company back on its feet and that he had an all-Italian consortium ready and willing to make the purchase within a time frame of 4 weeks as was written in Il Giornale. Here too he was lying. But that lie cost the Italian people dearly, also the Alitalia employees, badly advised by their “protectors”, the Trades Unions. After taking from the citizens 600 billion in old lire to pour into the flagship company, today Berlusconi is an interested promoter of a new company that at zero cost will exploit the branding and the routes of the Alitalia shell, by offloading the debts onto the State and onto a plethora of tiny shareholders who will lose everything.

Thanks to Berlusconi 7,000 employees will lose their jobs, a few more than the number worked out by Air France (there was talk of 2,100 in excess). What will happen is simple, one more time, the debts of Alitalia and of the Bad Company will fall onto the citizens, and at the same time a new company useful to Berlusconi and his bosom pals will be born.

But the government is insisting and Minister of the Economy, Tremonti thunders: “They left us with two disasters: Naples and Alitalia. The first one was resolved by Berlusconi at the end of July, tomorrow he will resolve Alitalia.” For Naples, it’s not enough to say “it is resolved” after clearing two roads in the city centre and furthermore the political responsibilities for that situation caused by a decade of alternating governments has never been tackled by removing the political causes. The second, Alitalia, it is this government that has made it worse and will make even worse still, at the expense of the citizens.

I am not against the fact of the company staying “Italian” as some people think, as long as it is done by respecting the rules of a free market and while respecting the interests of the Italian citizens and not a restricted circle of privileged folk.

Read also:
Alitalia: miracle postponed
The nonexistent bid
At the Country’s expense
Alitalia: basta illudere i cittadini

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Economy