(19 September 2012) – On the first day of monitoring electoral violation MANS uncovered that the electoral lists of the State Electoral Commission (DIK) are not properly updated and contain a number of inaccuracies. This discrepancies enable the potential violation of the citizens’ rights to vote given that we found 290 citizens with the same national ID number (aka. JMBG) registered twice in two different locations. Many of these individuals, according to the electoral lists of the DIK, were registered in two different locations more than a year ago. There exists sufficient grounds to believe that they had voted twice in previous elections.
Additionally, we find at least 1282 persons whose JMBG numbers are not listed in the DIK’s electoral roll, making it impossible to determine whether or not they are actually citizens of Montenegro (nor to verify in any way if they have the right to vote).
This confirms clearly that the manipulation of electoral rolls exists with the aim of influencing election results. We are convinced that this is simply one of the multiple examples of abuses that are used by individuals in order to manipulate election results. We call on all citizens to report to us any concrete violations of electoral laws, pressures they may be subjected to, purchasing of votes and other violations of the right to vote, especially the abuse of state resources for the purpose of elections.
We call on the DIK to immediately remove the duplicate and phantom voters from their electoral rolls. We are also calling on other relevant institutions to immediately release information that would help determine whether or not the electoral rolls contain the names of dead people, which can further be used to influence election results (something citizens have repeatedly claimed was occurring in previous elections). We call on all relevant institutions not to hide behind the false concern with the privacy of citizens, since it is clear to all now that numerous state institutions have been persistent in their efforts to prevent us and the public from having insight into JMBG information, in order to prevent research into corruption, as well as enable electoral machinations.
MANS will inform all the relevant international organizations about any illegal behaviour, especially the mission of the ODIHR and the Delegation of the European Commission in Montenegro.
