MANS today filed to the Constitutional Court of Montenegro 49 new complaints on, so far, submitted decisions of the State Election Commission (SEC) to fully reject complaints with irregularities that observers of MANS recorded in the local elections in Podgorica on May 25th of this year.
This continues the legal process that began when MANS in behalf of three political parties filed to the Election Commission of the Capital over 2500 complaints with the electoral irregularities that are registered at polling places in Podgorica. The first set of appeals against the SEC’s decisions and the Election Commission of Podgorica was submitted yesterday and numbered 148 complaints, and the deadline for acting upon them of 48 hours already started, so during tomorrow we can expect first decisions of the Constitutional Court on this issue.
Decisions on the first set of appeals that MANS filed will be made at the special session, which based on what we have as an information from the Constitutional Court, still is not scheduled.
MANS asked the Constitutional Court to attend the mentioned session, and every other where it would be considered complaints that we have filed, citing the principle of public from the Law on the Constitutional Court which prescribes that the work of this institution is public, and also on the official accreditation we got to observe the electoral process and that includes a procedure for deciding on complaints on election day.
From the Constitutional Court we still have not received an invitation, nor announcement when the session could be held.
In parallel with this process, MANS works on completing the final report on the local elections, which will be presented to the local and international community when is finished, as it was the case with the parliamentary report.
The final report on which MANS currently works will include election day, actually all stages of monitoring of the electoral process, starting from preparation of the polling station, to the closing and counting. An integral part of this report will be and the analysis of the actions of the competent institutions in reviewing official complaints with irregularities registered during election day.
After this report which will be focused on the election day and legal procedures followed after that, MANS will in a special report process and the period before the election day, and it will refer to the spending of budgetary funds in the pre-election period, as well as on the transparency and accuracy of the electoral roll.
MANS
