(Podgorica, 18 April 2013) – Of the nearly 7000 initiatives for oversight investigations into electoral list registrations that were submitted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) by both presidential candidates, only 30% have been processed (only those submitted by Miodrag Lekic). All of the initiatives submitted by Filip VUjanovic were rejected, with the MUP claiming that they weren’t submitted in the proper manner, after which Vujanovic announced an appeal with the Administrative Court.
In nearly every oversight report that the MUP has returned to Lekic, significant irregularities were noted. These include violations of the Law on Electoral Rolls and Oversight Investivations that point to the fact that the MUP never actually undertook the proper investigation procedures as prescribed by law.
MUP inspectors have already confirmed that hundreds of voters were registered on the basis of a single ruling, which is illegal, while claiming at the same time that this somehow had no effect the integrity of the Electoral List. Hundreds of reports failed to contain a proper description of the facts in the specific case. Nor do the reports mention which municipal election officials were present during the oversight investigation of the Electoral Lists, nor was a single report signed by such officials and whether or not they refused to sign (which is a requirement under the Law on Oversight Inspections).
It also appears that the signatures by the investigators on the MUP reports were forged, since they seem to differ significantly between reports, raising the question of who exactly was preparing the reports in the first place?
Lekic submitted all his initiatives by 3 April 2013, giving the MUP a legally mandated 24 hour deadline to investigate all complaints and to submit by April 6 in written form a report on the irregularities. Nevertheless, to this day the MUP has failed to provide reports on 70% of the filed complaints, violating the law in 5000 cases by failing to process them even after 12 days following the presidential elections.
This raises the question of whether or not the MUP has failed to do its job all this time because Konjevic suspended all the administrative investigators, due to the numerous violations of the law, leaving no one to do the job. Either that or he must have submitted his resignation for his responsibility in the affair, leaving the MUP without instructions about what to do till a new minister is appointed.
In reality, we don’t know why the MUP has failed to process 70% of the complaints. Regardless of the reasons we are demanding that this institution immediately complete its oversight investigations in a correct manner and inform Lekic and the public of their findings.
Similarly, besides the fact that we are calling upon the MUP to inform the public immediately of its findings in the complaints filed be Lekic, we also expect the MUP to inform the incumbent Vujanovic on the status of his complaints. We think it important for the MUP to state clearly whether it received an appeal from Vujanovic’s quarters, which he announced to us in a letter.
