(Podgorica, 26 March 2012) – MANS is calling on all political parties to refrain from using the citizen protest movement for their narrow political interests, including using the protests in their upcoming municipal election campaigns in Tivat and Herceg Novi.
The citizen protest has gathered the energies of people demanding concrete results in the fight against corruption and organized crime and who are asking that Montenegro immediately move forward. Workers, students, intellectuals, state administration workers and the unemployed have come into the streets because of the high electricity, phone, and gas bills, because of the criminal bankruptcies and privatizations that have enabled a narrow circle to gain enormous wealth, while foreign tycoons have increased the amounts flowing to their bank accounts.
The citizen protest movement has sent a strong message of unity to everyone, that we have all collectively been stripped of our rights, robbed and impoverished, regardless of our political and other convictions. At the recent protests, citizens were united under one flag – the bills that we cannot pay, the kickbacks and corruption that are costing the public the most, and the joint stand that it’s time for things in Montenegro to move from the current stasis.
This is the main force of the protest, since it has united all citizens who no longer want to be divided in a context where such divisions are being used only to strip and rob the country’s assets.
For these reasons, we believe that new divisions that would compromise the energy of citizens – awakened after more than two decades of quiescence – can only serve those who see the situation in the country as an opportunity for continuing their dirty business or who are seeking to gain short-term political points.
The citizen protests that have gathered until now tens of thousands of free citizens are only the beginning of Montenegro’s reawakening. Their goal is much larger than the short-term political points that would be won in local elections. To this end, the organizers of the current protest wave will not allow these protests to be manipulated in any way.
Politicians need to understand that citizens are equal in these protests, but also that we need to start breaking from the routines we’ve been living all these years that have divided us according to party, religion and national belonging, while we were all being mercilessly robbed in the background.
