(Podgorica, 23 April 2013) – Even though MANS’s complaints for oversight investigations into Montenegro’s voter lists were submitted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) by Miodrag Lekic, that institution has yet to process 70% of the files submitted 20 days ago.
Instead of respecting legally mandated deadlines in the Law on Electoral Lists – stating that all complaints must be considered within 24-hours of being filed and those filing them informed within 48-hours of the findings – the MUP has not only broken the law, but also appears to have completely stopped processing the complaints.
Lekic has not received any oversight investigation reports in the past few days, indicating that the principle task of the MUP appears to be suppressing evidence of irregularities in the voter lists instead of working to uncover and remove those irregularities.
For this reason, MANS will – in accordance with existing Montenegrin laws – prepare expediting requests for all the case-files that the MUP has yet to consider. We once again call upon the MUP to fulfill its legal obligations and we believe Lekic will soon be submitting expediting requests in order to uncover irregularities in the MUP’s alleged oversight of the voter lists.
We will use all available legal mechanisms in order to highlight once again what is already known to both the domestic and international community, i.e. that the MUP is brutally violating the rights of presidential candidates (and citizens) who suffer the consequences of these manipulations.
Following this legal measure, we will have a series of mechanisms, including procedures before the Administrative Court, which will force the MUP to respect Montenegro’s laws and to fulfill their obligations. The MUP will eventually have to consider all of the complaints filed and to inform Lekic of the results of these investigations.
In the end, given that Filip Vujanovic in earlier communications with MANS stated that he is personally interested in the results of the MUP’s oversight investigations, we believe that this institution has an obligation to immediately complete its investigation. We are once again calling on the MUP to publicly declare if it has been named in the case filed against it by Vujanovic.
We call on the Minister of Internal Affairs, Rasko Konjevic, to eventually stop manipulating Montenegro’s Constitution and the voting rights of all citizens. We want Konjevic to ensure that the oversight investigations are completed as stipulated by law and for the MUP to uncover all existing irregularities. Similarly, we call upon Konjevic to answer before the Montenegrin public as to who within the MUP was held accountable for this institutions failure to respect legally stipulated norms regarding oversight investigations.
On the contrary, we believe that the legal process against Konjevic and those employed in the MUP will begin soon, since the MUP’s numerous violations of the law can’t be ignored (even by Montenegro’s prosecutors). This is particularly true given the attention being paid to Montenegro’s voter lists by all relevant international organizations (including the European Union).
