Three political parties responded today to MANS’s call to submit the initiative to the Ministry of Interior (MI) for inspection electoral register, in order to clear that document from all imperfections that we have indicated in recent days, the Citizens’ Initiative Vaselj Sinistaj, NOVA on behalf of the Democratic front, and Positive Montenegro.
MANS created initiatives for inspection of electoral roll to more than 3100 individuals. They include 250 people who are suspected to be register twice as registered voters, 676 people younger than 60 years who have been deleted from the electoral roll, and 2176 people older than 40 years and newly enrolled in the electoral roll, and theses initiatives all three parties have filed today in 3:25 pm.
According to the current Law on voters lists, article 19, MI has 24 hours to complete the inspection of all reported cases, and no later then 48 hours after the completion of inspection, applicants of initiative have to submit records of conducted inspection control and copy of the act that orders the competent authority specific measures and actions.
In this way, conditions are created that MI carry full inspection of all controversial examples of the voting record that would enable them to achieve greater legitimacy.
However, we should not forget that the last time, on the eve of presidential election, MI roughly violated the Law on voters lists because it did not conduct the inspection within the statutory deadline based on the initiatives of two presidential candidates. Thus, even months after the presidential election, MI did not fully and in adequate way carried out the inspection of electoral roll, which is the reason why even today in that document exist a high number of irregularities.
Moreover, even before the presidential election the Law on voters lists is roughly violated, and inspection of the voters list is not conducted, the Minister of Interior or any of his colleagues were nor responsible.
That will not be possible any more when the new Law on the electoral roll, recently adopted in the Parliament, takes effect, because it provides precise penalties for all of those who do not carry out inspections of electoral roll in accordance with the Law, which will result in more precise and more timely electoral roll. Unfortunately, that law will take effect in the end of 2014, so all elections held by then would be burdened with the accuracy and updating of voters lists, as well with the question how such voters lists affect the legitimacy of the elections and free will of Montenegrin citizens.
We invite MI that this time fully implement the provisions of the electoral rolls relating to inspection supervision of this document, and to secure that this document in full capacity is accurate, up to date, without duplicates, and phantom voters. Also, we invite MI to secure that all people who are illegally cleared from the electoral registry in order to be denied the right to vote because they do not vote for the ruling party, are returned in the electoral roll in accordance with the Law.
In the end, we invite and all other political parties to contact us so we can assist them and offer them all technical support to submit to MI initiative for inspection of the electoral roll, in order to give their contribution to a higher accuracy and timeliness of this document.
MANS
