(Podgorica, 22 May 2012) – MANS is calling on Members of Montenegro’s Assembly to vote against the Draft Budget Rebalance, thus preventing the government from using the parliament to legalize unseen plunder and the further indebtedness of the state and its citizens.
Montenegro’s Assembly will tomorrow, during the sixth session of the first regular sitting in 2012, consider the Draft Budget Rebalance, which imposes further costs on citizens. Through the proposed rebalance, the Government is trying to legalize through the Assembly its capitulation to the interests of the Russian owner of the Podgorica Aluminum Combine (thus formalizing a scenario that would see every citizen in Montenegro subsidize from their own pockets the debts of Oleg Deripaska and the related kickbacks going to ministers serving in the Government of Montenegro).
The proposed rebalance will seek to cover up the budget holes from the impending activation of loan guarantees with Russian and Hungarian banks. We all know that this money hasn’t gone into KAP, since if these means were invested in the Combine, Montenegro would today have a modern factory, which is able to independently generate profits and create new jobs. The government hasn’t even tried to explain where millions of euros ended up, and whether instead of going to KAP they went instead into someone else’s pockets. Prime Minister Igor Lukšić is thus seeking to shift the burden for the consequences of poor privatization decisions onto the citizens (who will be forced to pay off for generations someone else’s debts that brought no benefits to Montenegro’s economy).
There is no doubt that the budgetary rebalance only aims to save the Russian tycoon by further placing the country into debt with other banks, but also by directly slipping the government’s hands further into the citizens’ pockets through the introduction of new regressive taxes.
As a start, Lukšić has ‘packed’ a new €1 tax on all electric meters, mobile phone cards, internet and cable TV, as well as additional excises on already expensive petroleum products and their derivatives. According to Lukšić, this regressive tax should by the end of the year raise some €13-million. This amount is sufficient to cover only the first tranche of the loan payments that are due, which means that we can expect at least another budgetary rebalance by the end of the year and additional impositions on the citizens’ household budgets.
We don’t think that citizens need to bear such government decisions. This government and Prime Minister have countless times until now demonstrated that they are incapable of working in the interests of Montenegro’s citizens. The Assembly must not allow itself to be misused once again for the realization of the profit motives of individuals in the government, the ruling coalition and associated tycoons and organized crime figures.
Early this year, the Assembly of Montenegro gave the government clear instructions in relation to KAP, which included annulling the agreement with Deripaska. Instead of annulling the agreement with the Russian oligarch, which has already cost us hundreds of millions of euros, the Government has dedicated itself to new ways of taxing citizens. Since the government is obviously violating the parliament’s decisions, it would be a shame for this body to now vote according to government dictate.
It’s time for the voice of resistance = to the insanity that the Government is offering us now “packed” as a budgetary rebalance – to be heard within the Assembly. Let us be clear, the government’s current moves have little to do with rebalancing this country’s budget and everything to do with the shoring up of a Russian tycoon (thanks to whose interests Montenegro has already been largely deindustrialized).
The Assembly of Montenegro must absolutely resist these measure, while every honest, uncorrupted and principled member of that body must raise their voices in opposition. The responsibility of every Member of the Assembly is to control the government’s work and ensure that the decisions taken by the parliament are in the interests of the country’s citizens.
For this reason we call on representatives of all parties to be brave enough and show sufficient honor to protect the citizens that elected them by voting against the rebalance. In this way they would effectively refuse becoming accessories to the on-going plunder of Montenegro’s citizens.
