Dear Mr. Vujanovic:
Today we received two of your letters in response to my promise tied to initiatives that you submitted as a presidential candidate at the invitation of MANS.
In your second letter, I understood that you will, as a presidential candidate, file charges against the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP), due to their decision to reject nearly 7000 complaints since you did not sign these (as stipulated in the Law on General Administrative Procedures and as we had previously suggested).
We stand behind the claim that you should have signed every individual initiative filed, just as Miodrag Lekic had done. We had hoped that as a lawyer by profession that you would have found the space to file the initiatives in a way that would be legally valid so that the MUP could accept your complaints.
Instead, we’ve arrived at an incredible situation in which the legitimacy of these elections was brought into question on the numerous fronts.
First, MUP has clearly violated your rights, as a presidential candidate, as well as the Law on Electoral Lists. That is, according to this piece of legislation, the MUP had to complete an oversight investigation into your initiative within 24 hours from the moment when you submitted it – i.e. until 3 April 2013. After this, MUP had a deadline of 48 hours to submit to you all the oversight investigation reports that they had completed by Friday, 5 April 2013 (i.e. prior to the presidential elections).
Nevertheless, according to the documentation that you submitted, MUP informed you only on April 8 – three days after the legally mandated deadline – that the 7000 complaints you filed jointly are invalid since each initiative has to be individually signed. MUP granted you a three day deadline to do so, that it until today, otherwise the initiatives would be rejected.
Since the MUP clearly violated the law through its actions, at least when it comes to the matter of legally mandated deadlines, we wanted to know why you didn’t immediately resort to legal remedies in order to protect your rights as a presidential candidate, as well as the overall legitimacy of the elections and state institutions?
Instead, from the communications that you’ve forwarded to us, we can see that on the same day your election staff informed the MUP that you are of the opinion that it’s sufficient to only submit one signature and thus encompass all of the individual requests whose legality needs to be determined. You called on the MUP to complete its investigation and to inform those filing the complaints and the general public of the results of these investigations and what measures would eventually be taken.
In your letter this morning, you informed me that you will inquire about all of these issues with the Minister of Internal Affairs and you submitted to me his direct response in which he calls on you to individually sign every last initiative filed, as prescribed by the law and as already done by Miodrag Lekic.
In your second letter, you informed me that you will verify your interpretation of the law through a case with the Administrative Court.
I would like to remind your that in the meantime the elections have already been held and that the individuals whose right to vote you are challenging by an initiative that you submitted to MUP, probably already used their rights to vote, which seriously brings into question the legitimacy of the electoral process and the credibility of the results.
You will certainly confirm with your case that the MUP has directly violated your rights in the electoral process, as well as that the elections themselves were held in a context of brutal violations of the Law on Electoral Lists (thereby bringing the legitimacy of the whole process into question). We still do not know if some 7000 individuals actually had a legal right to be on the elect rolls and thus vote in the elections.
On the other hand, following the elections, the MUP has begun submitting its findings to Miodrag Lekic. These findings turn out to have been completed in a cursory and illegal manner, prompting Lekic and his team to file further legal processes against the MUP.
Therefore, these are the first elections in which both presidential candidates have tried to confirm whether 7000 individuals illegally obtained or lost the right to vote. These elections have also shown that the MUP has brutally violated one of the key laws that should guarantee fair and free elections.
I am convinced that this would not have occurred if you had, in accordance with the law, submitted 7000 individual initiatives as suggested by your legal team.
For this reason, we expect that the case that you submitted to the Administrative Court will be rejected and as a result the complaints you submitted will not be reviewed.
Even if your case was accepted, given the duration of judicial proceedings, the MUP would eventually be obliged to carry out oversight investigations only after the ruling, which would be considerably after the declaration of election results, which would turn such proceedings into a farce.
For this reason, Mr. Vujanovic, I’m expecting that you’ll undertake more concrete steps, and as the VP of the ruling party demand the immediate replacement of the Minister of Internal Affairs, Rasko Konjevic, for violating the Law on Electoral Lists and bringing into question the legitimacy and eventual results of the elections.
Certainly, I believe that the public expects of you as someone with legal training, to demand accountability for all individuals involved in manipulations of the electoral lists, as well as those from the MUP who are now working on suppressing knowledge of these abuses.
Due to all of the above, I believe that the Montenegrin public and the international community are expecting of you that until the conclusion of all legal proceedings you do not accept any of the presidential election results. This is especially important since your rights as a presidential candidate were also violated.
Otherwise, as a witness to illegal actions you’d become an accomplice in their completion.
In the end, with full understanding for the efforts that you would have to undertake sign and seal each initiative, as Miodrag Lekic had done, we are offering you the full administrative and legal assistance of MANS. We would like to help you ensure that the numerous manipulations of the electoral list that we jointly have drawn attention to be processed correctly, in so far as your intentions are truly sincere.
With respect,
Vanja Calovic
Executive Director, MANS
