Unsurprisingly, the Left Bloc has questioned the Government on the criteria it used in deciding board appointments at TAP as only one of the seats allocated to the State is to be occupied with someone with experience in the air transport sector.
In a question addressed to the Ministry of Planning and Infrastructures, the Left Bloc’s Heitor de Sousa demanded that in future anyone appointed to the boards of companies in which the State has a shareholding should be scrutinised by parliament.
The Left Bloc pointed out to the ministry run by Pedro Marquês that "there’s only one out of six members" (António Menezes) appointed to the Board of Directors of TAP that has any professional experience in the air transport sector - “on what criteria does the Government base its choices for the new members of the Board of Directors of TAP."
On Sunday, it was revealed that Esmeralda Dourado from the car industry, Bernardo Trindade who was a Secretary of State for Tourism, and António Gomes de Menezes who is a former president of SATA airlines, will become non-executive directors on the TAP board, representing taxpayers’ interests.
Then there’s Miguel Frasquilho, a former president of a government investment agency (Agência para o Investimento e Comércio Externo de Portugal) who will be the new Chairman of the Board of Directors, Ana Pinho, chairman of the Serralves Foundation cultural body, and the lawyer Diogo Lacerda Machado who is a close friend of the Prime Minister and who helped the PM regain public control of TAP after the Socialist Party was elected.
Former Prime Minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, said it was rather a shame for the government to name Diogo Lacerda Machado as a TAP director, "the same man who negotiated the reversal" of TAP’s privatisation, adding that his PSD party would never have done such a thing, oh no.
The Left Bloc is disappointed that this sort of favouritism still exists, when a meritocracy would surely be a better way appoint board members of State controlled businesses, "the opacity, the lack of transparency and the lack of criteria that, as a rule, accompany these appointments, cannot be concealed. Often, nominees and ex-nominees transit between various public and private companies as if such transactions were natural and eternal."
The Minister of Planning and Infrastructure said that Diogo Lacerda, "has already showed he knows know how to negotiate several complex dossiers, but above all he knows how best to interpret the public interest." Marques did not comment on the other TAP board appointments.
