MANS expects that the President of Montenegro Filip Vujanovic despite indisputable conflict of interest in which he is when it comes to electoral legislation, would find plenty of professional integrity, political courage and capacity for consistent application of regulations, and that immediately upon receipt from the Parliament by a decree declare amendments to the Law on financing political parties.
Thus, the new Law on financing political parties largely deprives political base of Filip Vujanovic, most mechanisms for misuse of state funds that have been used during his pre-election campaign, and which are documented as part of the affair “Snapshot”, so we believe that Vujanovic does not have a great political interest that the new Law comes into force as soon as possible.
The new Law on financing political parties and changes over the entire electoral law are direct consequence of the political crisis that have been provoked by Vujanovic’s controversial victory in the last presidential election, so soon after his victory, even from European addresses is articulated need to “build confidence in the electoral process”.
Working group with that name had a goal to change all laws relating to the electoral process so it can not happen again that some candidate or party win the election thankfully to misuse of state funds or voting rights of the citizens.
After over 10 months of work on amending the electoral legislations, the Parliament adopted mentioned law, and Vujanovic’s declaration is the final legal step in factual limitation of the abuses that have happened during the previous elections. This is recognized by the EU, which the adoption of relevant legislation designated as one of the currently most important priorities of Montenegro. Force of this Law before the local elections in the Spring of this year will narrow the space for buying votes using public funds and processes of employment by officials from the DPS that sources of power for years have in their hands.
Because of that it is not a surprise panic that reigned between officials of DPS in the past few days, which by all means try to deny the adopted law just to get additional time to abuse state funds and to buy votes in the upcoming local elections. Thus, high ranking officials from DPS, including and some actors from the affair “Snapshot”, keep trying to convince the citizens of Montenegro in a complete pointless thesis placing them as a prevention of electoral abuses which is anti-constitutional and contrary to European standards.
Not only that the parliamentary members of DPS do not hesitate to offend the common sense of every citizen stating such claims, but loudly invite and the President of Montenegro, at the same time Vice President of their party, to return the amendments to the Law on financing political to the Parliament and they announce the filing of initiative to the Constitutional Court if he fails to do so.
Exactly panic that is expressed among parliamentary members of the DPS because of the fact that by the amendments to the Law on financing political parties from their hands are taken out mechanisms for vote buying, best show to what extend this law is needed to Montenegro to secure legal and correct electoral process, the same for all participants, and in which the citizens should have trust.
We invite Filip Vujanovic to raise above his own conflict of interest and the fact that exactly his presidential campaign was burdened by doubts in a big electoral abuses, so to declare the amendments to the Law on financing political parties immediately as he receives them from the Parliament. Also, we invite Vujanovic that party interest subordinates to the indisputable public interest that the upcoming elections are fair game for all participants, because that is not only a key foreign policy requirement for Montenegro to continue process of joining the EU, but also the main way that the confidence of citizens in the electoral process slowly begins to built.
Vuk Maras
Director of Monitoring Program
