Decision of the Parliament of Montenegro to continue to work on changing the set of laws relating to the electoral process, which so far worked on the Working group for developing trust in the electoral process, represents the step toward creating conditions that future elections are held in a lawful and fair conditions, and all political parties before voters to have equal opportunities.
However, from the announcements from the Parliament that could be heard after yesterday’s meeting of presidents’ collegium of the Parliament, there is a reason to fear that the planned work will not be completed in an appropriate manner, actually that representatives of political parties will be unable to agree on the Law on election of councilors and members of the Parliament, and Law on voters lists, because these laws until now continuously provoked great political disagreements.
Regardless of the outcome of negotiations of these laws, a key law that right now has the support of most members of the Parliament is the Law on amendments of the Law on financing political parties, and it would have to be adopted before the big local elections, which will be held in the spring of this year.
Ambiguities in the Law on financing political parties allowed to happen and scandal “Snapshot” as well as numerous others affairs which showed that state money and public sector employment are abused with purpose to ease for the party in power to buy voters for their lists and candidates, and no one so far is punished by any way. Exactly, because of the shortcomings in the Law on financing political parties, DPS without any consequence used state money to pay off different social contributions, grants, gratuities, loans, write off debts for electricity, water and utilities, and to make other payments in the electoral period, as well as employing new people in the state administration and municipalities, in order to obtain votes in a previous election process.
Maintaining a situation where there are no responsibilities and mechanisms for the State election commission to investigate abuse of state funds and employment processes during the election campaign, and to punish those responsible, represents an open invitation to the party in power to continue with abuses from the scandal “Snapshot” and to continue to buy votes in different ways.
Therefore, it is necessary immediately to improve the Law on financing of political parties, because only if this law comes into effect before the local election in the Spring it will gain conditions to maintain so-so fair electoral games. Changes to any other law, in the case if this one on financing political parties is not adopted, it would be mere representation of throwing dust in the eyes of Montenegrin citizens, and would not lead to any kind of building confidence in the electoral process even by political parties that participate in this process.
We want to believe that the members of the collegium who yesterday agreed to continue cooperation on the development of electoral legislation are aware of this fact, and will not allow any party, not even DPS, to continue to brutally abuse money of citizens of Montenegro in order to get votes. Therefore, we expect that at least changes to the Law on financing political parties, whose solutions so far are supported by all opposition parties as well as members of the ruling coalition unless DPS, would be referred to the parliamentary procedure and adopted before the local election. Otherwise, it is a question of the purpose of participation of other political parties in local elections if DPS is still allowed to use state resources and apparatus for buying votes in the electoral process.
Vuk Maras, Director of Monitoring Program
