(Podgorica, 17 June 2012) – In only four days some 30,000 citizens signed the initiative before the Constitutional Court that demands the annulment of the Law on Taxes, as well as the Decision and Methodology for calculating electricity prices.
There hasn’t been a single citizen initiative in Montenegro that in such a short period has received such substantial support from citizens, demonstrating that a new era is upon us and that grassroots resistance will not cease since the majority is no longer prepared to subsidize the debts and price of corruption of a small elite.
Citizens have not been protected from unconstitutional laws and regulations by the system’s institutions, instead these institutions have been directly implicated in perpetuating unconstitutional impositions upon households.
First, the government put forward the Law on Taxes, which was adopted by the Assembly through its voting machinery. Second, the Regulatory Agency for Energy (RAE) adopted a decision on prices, the Assembly regulated its work, but it did not challenge the most basic problem, which is the methodology used to calculate the electricity price.
In both cases, the institutions of the system have imposed upon citizens to pay for something that they did not cause. First, it is well known that the “euro by euro” law was adopted exclusively in order to cover the Podgorica Aluminum Combine’s (KAP) debts that are paid from the budget. That means, that the new law is essentially asking citizens to pay the KAP’s debts. Since this is only the first half of the debts that are coming due soon, it is clear that the Government plans to continue offloading the burden of paying the KAP’s debts onto the country’s citizens.
Secondly, the electricity system loses about 20% of its capacity a month while the Electric Power Company of Montenegro (EPCG) charges us for its planned investments. In this way, citizens are paying for a product that they never receive, that is the kilowatts that someone else has used or that were lost due to the deterioration of the supply network. This is all happening while the EPCG retains significant deposits in the First Bank (Prva Banka), while taking credits from other banks, while asking that citizens pay the price of investing in infrastructure, which was the responsibility of the new investor (Italy’s A2A) as stipulated in the privatization agreement.
This is all known to the members of the Assembly of Montenegro and the RAE, who are also hiding other information concerning the dealings of the KAP and EPCG and who continue to insist that it is the citizens who should be paying off debts and the other costs of corruption.
These facts highlight how the Government and the Assembly and other state institutions are captured by private interests, the price of which has to be paid by citizens. For this reasons, participation in the work of such institutions represents complicity in the adoption of decisions that are injurious to citizens, since attending the Assembly only creates an illusion of democracy and thus provides a cover for corruption.
The Constitutional Court, as the supreme institution of justice, must immediately demonstrate whether or not it is totally captured. More than 30,000 signatures by citizens imposes an enormous moral obligation on all judges of the Constitutional Court to immediately consider this initiative and to make a ruling.
We continue to receive signatures from all parts of Montenegro, which we will symbolically present to the Constitutional Court as members of the Citizens’ Front.
