(Podgorica, 14 April 2013) – The most recent responses of the MUP in light of oversight investigations into the Central Electoral List (CEL), which were submitted to presidential candidate Miodrag Lekic, demonstrate that this institutions – from day to day – has continued to violate all possible legal stipulations in order to whitewash the enormous illegalities tied to the management of voter lists.
Of the nearly 7000 initiatives submitted to the MUP by Miodrag Lekic, requesting oversight investigations in order to determine irregularities in the CEL, this institution has till now only processed 15% of these (or some 1000 complaints). Even though the deadlines stipulated in the Law on Electoral Lists for doing so ran out on April 6 (i.e. just prior to the presidential election). No one has been held to account in the MUP for this brutal violation of the law, including serving minister Rasko Konjevic who heads this ministry and subordinate administrative investigators who are charged with overseeing the investigations.
In the small percentage of cases that the MUP’s inspectors have concluded to date, nearly every report submitted contains serious flaws, pointing to the conclusion that proper oversight investigations weren’t even carried out. That is, not one of the reports submitted to date contain a description of the factual circumstances, nor do they include information that would allow one to conclude whether or not municipalities were registering or removing voters in a legal manner. All the reports submitted by the MUP were only signed by the administrative investigators, not by individuals that were implicated in the oversight investigations (officials in the secretariats for local self-government who are responsible for the management of voter lists), nor was it stated whether or not these individuals had refused to sign the reports, which is a requirement under the Law on Oversight Investigations. To make matters worse, MANS has determined that even the signatures of the administrative investigators were falsified, since there are drastic differences between the signatures from one report to another.
To date, the most striking violations of the oversight investigations over the Electoral Lists were identified in Podgorica. In some 400 cases that MUP has allegedly already looked into, and which deal with individuals who were registered into the CEL for the first time, oversight investigations weren’t legally valid and were lacking in key elements. For this very reason, presidential candidate Miodrag Lekic, submitted appeals to the MUP to repeat the oversight investigations in these cases.
First, not a singe of the MUP’s oversight investigation reports were signed by those responsible within the Secretariat for Municipal Self-Government of the Capital City of Podgorica, whose work was allegedly reviewed in the MUP reports. Nor was it indicated anywhere whether or not these officials had refused to sign the documents as required by law. The second glaring mistake relates to the fact that MUP investigators claimed that these 400 individuals in the Podgorica voter list were registered on the basis of a single act, numbered UP I 06-209/13-113, which had 18 different dates associated with its adoption (which is legally impossible).
The appeals that Lekic submitted request the repeat of oversight investigations into nearly all of these 400 cases, since it was impossible that they be registered on the basis of a single ruling, given that requests to register are determined on the basis of individual rulings, never on the basis of group registration. In addition to demanding a review of the oversight investigation, Lekic also requested a copy of the infamous UP I 06-209/13-113 document, in order to determine on what basis hundreds of individuals were registered in Podgorica.
The copy of UP I 06-209/13-113 that the MUP submitted to Lekic’s team couldn’t in any way be used as a legal basis for registering individuals on the Electoral list, since the act isn’t even an official document, which can be seen from the document itself (attached). This “act” is in fact a table titled “List of Citizens with Biometric IDs Not Registered in the Electoral list.” On this page, the now infamous number “06-209/13-113” is inscribed by hand, alongside the date “11.02.2013” (page no. 2 of the attached document). This “document” doesn’t have an official filing number, stamp, signature, nor any other mark that would indicate that this is an official document. In no way could this document serve as the legal basis for registering anyone into the voter lists, not to mention the registration of hundreds of people.
In the MUP’s response to Lekic (also attached), in which they forwarded the UP I 06-209/13-113 document, the ministry indicates that the registration of several individuals under the sam filing number is illegal. This is something that MANS has been stating since the beginning. Furthermore, the letter notes that administrative investigators pointed this out to Podgorica’s Secretariat for Local Self-Government. Nevertheless, in the same answer in which MUP basically states that the registration of entire groups on the basis of this document is illegal, they also claimed that this had not impact on the correctness of procedures during which changes to the voter list were made (which is also legally impossible).
That is, in so far as someone received the right to be registered in the Electoral List on the basis of a document that is illegal and contrary to Montenegrin legal procedures, there is no way that it would then be possible for this not to affect the legality of the alterations eventually made on this basis. We believe that the MUP’s investigators are very much aware of this fact.
Instead of ensuring that the institutions of the Capital City of Podgorica register citizens on the basis of individuals rulings, as stipulated by law, it is clear that this process was carried out in an illegal manner and on the basis of random tables that have no legal standing. The MUP’s investigators pass over all these facts by asserting that “it did not affect the integrity of the process” related to alterations of the voter list. Instead of such dismissive statements, they should be sanctioning these illegal actions and establishing how many individuals, and who specifically, was illegally registered in the Electoral List.
From all of the above, as well as on the basis of numerous other mistakes made by the MUP that we’ve drawn attention to in the past few days, we can only conclude that the ministry is attempting to whitewash and suppress evidence of gross manipulations with the Electoral List. For this reason, all MUP employees, including above all Minister Konjevic, assigned the task of hiding irregularities, must be put on notice that they are committing a series of criminal acts which can result in a prison sentence. They should know that as a result of such actions, someone will have to answer.
