(Podgorica, 19 April 2012) – The Government of Montenegro understands perfectly well the seriousness of the work that MANS is doing, as witnessed by its unsuccessful attempts to frighten workers and other citizens from participating in upcoming protests and public expressions of dissatisfaction.
After years of neglect, the government has suddenly remembered the plight of workers in northern Montenegro, to whom they are now sending messages of promised support so long as they stay at home and don’t join the protests.
They have made the rounds of Bijelo Polje, and are now preparing to head ever more northwards, offering empty promises as they go. If they were truly interested in how those they’ve left without jobs and income are surviving, they wouldn’t have waited for them to go out into the streets in large numbers in order to start showing concern.
When workers from enterprises in Bijelo Polje, Rožaje, Kolašin would come to protest before government institutions in the capital Podgorica, government officials would simply ignore them by avoiding them through detours in their expensive cars.
Government officials are readying to enter Ulcinj as well tomorrow, where another protest is planned for this Saturday. We expect that attending the protest will also be members of the ruling DPS party, who have threatened the party headquarters in Podgorica that they well bring their entire families into the streets since they do not have sufficient income to live from.
Wherever power holders haven’t been able to succeed with promises, they have resorted to threats. They remind workers who still have jobs that they could soon find themselves without work, while those who receive social assistance are threatened with losing it.
Small and medium entrepreneurs are reminded by government and DPS functionaries that they may owe taxes to the state and that it would be better for them to stay at home.
Lukšić’s government seems to be proud of these activities, how else is one to interpret the claim about the difficult economic circumstances and their efforts to overcome the crisis. As if someone else was sitting in their seats all these years and was making decisions that were bad for Montenegro’s citizens.
The results of their rule can be seen by the fact that the country is threatened with bankruptcy, since they’ve guaranteed a number of credits to domestic and foreign tycoons – credits they had no intention of returning.
Now the government is playing a cat-and-mouse game with the Russians concerning the Podgorica Aluminum Combine (KAP), while trying to convince us that there is nothing to worry about. Probably as much as the most expensive price for fuel and electricity in the region, which again this government is responsible for since it allowed and stimulated the monopolies of Jugopetrol and Electroprivreda.
MANS is in no way responsible for the difficult conditions in the country, nor are the workers of industries destroyed by the government, which gifted the valuable assets and properties of Montenegrin factories to their friends, relatives, criminals and shady foreign investors.
The products of the government’s economic policy include hundreds of university graduates registered as unemployed, while the government officials allow their own sons and daughters and party loyalists to occupy the best positions.
For all these reasons and because of the crisis point to which they have brought us, the government is also announcing that the salaries of state administrative workers will be late and that they will be much lower when they are paid out.
If they had paid attention to all this, Lukšić’s cabinet wouldn’t be counting the days with the awareness that this is effectively its first and last mandate.
It is only a matter of the day they will be forced to go, so let them not try to convince us that we’re not serious in critiquing them for wasting our money for their personal use.
