In 2016, Dr. UCS found a transport sector with problems, but also with solutions - Sara Lopes
UCS has said that it will stabilize inter-island maritime transport with the ship that the government, through Enapor, has ordered to be built (I'll refrain from talking about this stupid option here). In other words, it's going to stabilize maritime transport in 2 to 3 years' time, with a ship still on the drawing board. It's unbelievable that Cape Verde's PM, Dr. UCS, doesn't understand that in order to stabilize maritime transport, all he has to do is force the Concessionaire to comply with the contract that all Cape Verdeans pay for. A sign of exhaustion? And he has forgotten that the government's mandate ends in 2026.
But that's life, because there is such a thing as "Karma". In popular language, "here's what you do, here's what you pay". In 2016, Dr. UCS found a transport sector with problems, but also with solutions that had been identified, studied, quantified and financed, and undergoing a thorough reform.
It changed everything because it was different and did things differently. And we warned them that they should be wary that if it was that simple, it would be done. For someone who had asked God not to let power go to his head, either he had the wrong contact for access to God or God already knew that there was nothing that could be done. Arrogance had already taken hold of the creature and everything that gravitated around him.
Yes, the sector's problems were complex. In the airline sector, the changes in the airport system, when the country now has 4 international airports, but above all with the entry into operation of Praia International Airport and the transfer of TACV's base to that infrastructure, a few years after TACV opted to buy new ATR aircraft, two 72s and one 42, caused serious problems for TACV and the insistence on not changing its operations and business model and adjusting the company to the new airport system and the new highly competitive international context with the entry of low-cost airlines and the legacy crisis, made the problem worse and between 2012 and 2015, the situation was really difficult. The management was not up to the challenges and the financing model was not adequate. But the problems were finally identified and important changes were underway.
These changes would not bring spectacular results in the short term. It would take persistent action and some understanding between all the political players about what needed to be done, and that it wouldn't be: not easy, not overnight, and certainly not painlessly.
What made UCS and the MpD system?
He turned TACV and the problems in the transportation system, which were nothing like the current precariousness and disorientation, into a battlefield and his main weapon for winning the elections.
In the maritime sector that the government of the 1990s abandoned, handing it over to the "market", which was non-existent or too rudimentary to work, the government of José Maria Neves began by investing heavily in port infrastructure, berths, RO/RO ramps, security systems, statistics and port operations, and from 2013, with funding from the World Bank, At the time, 2013, the same bank that had supported the state's withdrawal from the sector in the 1990s had already understood that in an archipelago with the characteristics of Cape Verde, without the state there is no transport system that can resist, and decided to support a thorough reform of the sector, the only way to put an end to the weaknesses of the inter-island transport service segment.
It was underway, based on studies of the operational and financial model for the establishment of two inter-island maritime transport concessions, with a strong commitment from national shipowners and logistics operators, greater state intervention in the first 5 years, intermodality and empowerment of the regulator, through the creation of the AMP, maritime safety with the creation of the Inter-Island Maritime Transport and Safety Fund, the SAR System integrating maritime and air transport and the strengthening of the School of the Sea's capacity to intervene in the initial and continuing training of seafarers.
What have you done again, UCS? It smashed what it could find, allowed deals to be made with friends and established a monopoly, completely unregulated, in which the dealership is in charge and the
The State obeys, the Concessionaire fails and the State comes to its rescue and assumes its costs and contractual responsibilities, to the point where it starts giving advances to the company and takes over the purchase of the ships and relieves it of responsibility for all the faults it commits, contractually, vis-à-vis the passengers it was supposed to protect in the event of faults.
Now he's embarked on a new adventure of having a boat built, on the run, without really evaluating what he's doing, in his last year in office, and Enapor is the one buying the boat! In other words, faced with a lot of problems, he creates new ones and a new situation to make life easier for the Concessionaire so that it can continue to wash its hands of things.
In the air, it was a party, champagne, bubble bath, social media parties, entourages heading to Sal to receive the planes, 3 Ministers and 3 members of TACV's Board of Directors holding out their hands at the same time to an incredulous Icelandair representative, in a nerdy deal that only those who don't have 2 fingers on their foreheads didn't see how it would end. I remember a "visionary" and illustrious MpD activist saying that "there would be a Cape Verde before and a Cape Verde after Icelandair's entry".
Really, he was right about one thing: after the cap they gave us, with almost the entire nation celebrating and waxing poetic about the 11 planes that would connect us to the world from China to Chile, if there's one thing the Creole can't keep boasting about, it's being the smartest guy around.
Because there have been other crashes, the most dramatic of which, after the Icelandair crash, was the sad story of Best, which in a few days became Bad Fly.
And the announcements of 11 Boeings, accompanied by tirades like "this is not for those who want it, it's for those who can and know", also ended up in excuses for the effects of Covid 19, the fault of regulation, the fault of the opposition, the fault of the weather, the rain that didn't come and even climate change.
And those of us who drew attention to our mistakes, to our excessive euphoria for no reason, to the fragility and unsustainability of solutions glued together with spit, were treated like gossips and messengers of doom, jealous and envious, because we weren't capable of such feats.
Too much, too much narrative, too many lines to wrap around discursive prisons that didn't match the facts and figures.
And now Ulysses? He's really screwed and underpaid, wounded with the same iron with which he once stabbed his opponent and he doesn't have a Plan B. He doesn't! The conversation in that interview couldn't have been more enlightening. The domestic operations of the national airline, which should never have been abolished, the problem wasn't the inter-island operations, but now it's hard to get them going again, the debts accumulated at TACV and NewCo are unbearable, the budget aid partners are squeezing the government, there's no service, there's no trust, the regulator has been reduced to dust, there's no maintenance service, the airports have been privatized in a terrible deal, and those who use the services of the airports and CVH have to pay. All that's missing is another disastrous deal with CV Handling for the screen to be completely blurred.
He campaigned and still does, shamefully, perversely and maliciously with maritime accidents, because it was useful, it brought votes, and now he is experiencing the other side of the coin, because KARMA exists, we reap what we sow, and he is now realizing, with great difficulty, that problems don't just disappear with a change of government and that governing a country with the particularities that Cape Verde has requires a lot of work, resources, time, technical knowledge and that without some peace, some common sense and some consensus you can't solve the main problems and transport is one of them.
Because bad luck never comes alone and stubbornness and excessive rhetoric and narrative, without calm and competent technical work does not work, even the plane celebrated a few weeks ago with pomp and circumstance, is already wrapped in a mess.
To UCS a word of advice: make peace with the truth, let go of the narratives, accept that you have no solutions, that you failed, that you trusted the wrong people and go back to the point where you found the solutions designed in 2016. If it is able to put all the heads together and still have room for the state to invest, it could do well. But it will no longer be the silver bullet for 2026. On the contrary, it will be his Achilles heel, at the very least, if not the hemlock that kills his dream of a third term."
Sara Lopes
