Although the legal limit had passed in which the Ministry of Interior (MI) had to complete the inspection of the electoral roll based on the initiative submitted by the three political parties, so far these parties did not get any information on what steps MI took and what they discovered during the inspection.
As a reminder, three political parties – the Civil Initiative Vaselj Sinistaj, New Serbian Democracy on behalf of the Democratic Front, and the Positive Montenegro filed initiative for the inspection of the electoral roll on Monday, March 3rd at 3:25 pm, and reported all those cases of possible irregularities in the electoral roll on which MANS indicated in the previous period. Submitted initiatives relate to over 3100 people and include 250 people who are suspected to be a double registered voters, 676 people under the age of 60 who were erased from the electoral roll, and 2176 people older than 40 but newly enrolled in the electoral register.
According to the current Law on voters list, MI had a deadline of 24 hours to conduct a full inspection of the electoral roll based on the initiatives filed by the three political parties, and that deadline expired yesterday March 4th at 15:25 pm. However, until today MI did not submit any information to any of political parties who filed initiatives for the inspection of the electoral roll whether the inspection of the electoral roll have been conducted or not, what kind of irregularities have been noticed, and what specifically MI did in that regard.
Also, according to the Law on voters list, after MI conduct the inspection of the electoral roll, it is required to submit written information to those who requested the initiatives about every case that they initiated within 48 hours, and that deadline expires tomorrow at 15:25 pm.
Having in mind that MI, until now, has not provided any information about the conducted inspection of the electoral roll, it is hard to expect that until tomorrow it will submit detailed information for each of 3100 problematic cases from the electoral roll who have been reported.
Unfortunately this shows that MI continues with the old practice, which exists since the time of the presidential election, according to which that initiative does not show basic political will to implement the Law on voters lists, and to secure that the electoral roll is accurate and up to date. Clearly, the fact that in MI neither Minister nor anyone else did not bear any responsibility for failing to conduct the inspection of the electoral roll before the presidential election, it greatly simplifies MI to continue to break the Law on voters lists.
However, these problems will be eliminated when the Law on the electoral roll comes into force later this year, because the new Law provides the penalties for responsible people in MI, if they do not conduct inspection of the electoral roll in accordance with the Law.
Having in mind that Montenegro is currently in a phase where is necessary to build trust in the electoral process, on which point citizens and the entire international community, we believe that MI unconditionally must implement the existing Law on voters list and ensure that this document is accurate and up to date. Because of that, once again we invite MI that, in accordance with the Law, no later then tomorrow by 15:25 pm, provide to all political parties information on how the inspection of the electoral roll is conducted, what is it found, and in which way irregularities will be removed.
MANS
