(Podgorica, 10 June 2012) – In the name of the Citizens’ Front, I’ve put together an initiative to challenge the constitutionality of the recently adopted Law on Taxes that imposes additional surcharges on SIM cards, electricity meters, and cable hookups. The challenge will be submitted the the Constitutional Court of Montenegro tomorrow.
This law has enabled the Government to cover up the gaps in the budget left by corruption and the damage that has been caused by their corrupt and scandalous behavior.
Continuing the practice by which public funds are used to fill private pockets, this law has enabled the government to shift state administrative functions to legal entities already suspected of having participated in corrupt dealings at the highest level.
Contrary to the constitution, the law makes mobile phone operators, electricity providers and cable distributors into official tax collectors by giving them the right to calculate and charge taxes to their users.
The responsibility of paying taxes can only be introduced to the user of a given service, not to those who have access to services, and its particularly unconstitutional for the mentioned legal entities to determine who is required to pay such taxes, maintain a register of taxpayers, as well as calculating and charging public revenues.
In this way the executive and legislative branches of government have given their business partners, over whom allegations of serious corruption hang, the authority of the Tax Administration and other state administrative bodies, thereby openly demonstrating that the state apparatus is being exclusively managed for personal interests and in order to protect ongoing corruption.
In the hopes of continuing their corrupt practices at any price, these legal entities have been enabled by the above law to make decisions concerning the rights and interests of the citizenry in an area from which citizens were generally locked out of any say.
Mobile operators, electricity providers and cable distributors have been given the right to raise taxes from their users without any resolutions, thereby depriving citizens of the right to legal remedy against the decisions made by these legal entities.
For this reason, we believe that the Constitutional Court of Montenegro should immediately act upon our initiative, in order to issue an order concerning the completion of individual jobs that the legal entities could adopt in relation to this law. This would allow the Court to protect the constitutionality and legality of the legal system and to stop with its practice until now of only protecting the interests of those who don’t have any intention of stopping their plunder at the expense of Montenegro’s citizens.
In the coming days and weeks, actions will be organized in all Montenegrin cities that would enable all citizens who wish to sign our initiative to do so and thereby participate in the constitutional-judicial process before the Constitutional Court.
The introduction of these impositions through the Law on Taxes is one of the main reasons why citizens have been protesting for months, since they threaten to only further the already difficult socio-economic situation in Montenegro.
