After the Montenegrin Parliament yesterday adopted amendments on the Law on financing political parties and other relevant election legislation, we believe that there are no other obstacles to declare them valid by the State President Filip Vujanovic, so the protection mechanisms incorporated in them could be used on the next local elections.
In fact, it is a new Law on financing political parties that would prevent vote buying conducted by the DPS during previous election cycles using state funds, state money, and employment in the public administration in order to achieve a higher political influence in the field and illegally obtain votes for themselves.
Adequate and consistent application of the new law will provide equal conditions to all participants in the elections and will prevent the ruling party to continue to ruthlessly exploit the fact that exactly its staff constitute most of the institutions in the system that right before the elections have the money that can be used to buy votes in the field.
Thus, the new law should prevent, right before the elections, share of welfare benefits, grants and loans in order to purchase votes, and that for the same reason debts for electricity, water, utilities, taxes and so on are forgiven.
The Law also to the existing State Election Commission prescribes higher powers and now it is first time legally obliged and responsible to prosecute and punish those who abuse to get votes for their party. Duties from just adopted Law on financing political parties are binding and for the current composition of State Election Commission, regardless of the fact that today Parliament’s discussion did not pass the Law on Amendments to the Election of Deputies, and in that sense there are no excuses for the current blind eyes to the brutal and overt electoral malpractices.
Also, we believe that there is no any kind of reason to wait for the declaration of the adopted legislations, clearly having in mind that that is crucial for restoring confidence in the electoral process, which is today additionally shaken by the decision of the DPS and one opposition party to bring down the Law on Election of Deputies, and for the fact that to build confidence in the electoral process is also one of the key foreign policies of Montenegro.
For this reason, we call the President of Montenegro Filip Vujanovic to emergency declare all laws adopted yesterday, primarily amendments to the Law on financing political parties, so the same are, as soon as possible, officially published in the Official Gazette of Montenegro, so their application could start immediately.
Vuk Maras
Director of Monitoring Program
