MANS today filed a criminal charge to the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office against several unidentified persons who have assisted over 200 citizens from the territory of Tivat to illegally vote in three electoral cycles on the state level – two parliamentary in 2009 and 2012 and at presidential elections in 2013. In this way, unidentified persons have committed crimes of drafting of inaccurate voters’ lists, abuse of official position for a prolonged duration and negligent performance of duty.
MANS’s program for monitoring and analysis conducted at the beginning of April an analysis of the voters list and found that 94 persons from the territory of that municipality for years illegally had the right to vote in parliamentary and presidential elections even without Montenegrin citizenship. Thus, 65 persons without citizenship could vote in all three election cycles, 27 persons only in the parliamentary elections of 2009 and 2012, and two persons had the right to vote without citizenship parliamentary elections in 2012 and presidential elections held in 2013.
When we presented this information to the public, we expressed doubt that this list is not final and that the extent of abuse of the voters list, only on the territory of Tivat, is significantly higher, which is why we conducted additional analyses. These analyses determined new abuses and identified an additional 114 persons who illegally, without Montenegrin citizenship, had the right to vote on some of the previous elections such as: 104 persons without citizenship voted in the parliamentary elections in 2009 and 2012, eight people voted in all three election cycles, and three persons without citizenship voted in the parliamentary elections in 2009.
This means that more than 200 people only from the territory of Tivat without Montenegrin citizenship had the right to vote on all or some of the previous national elections, as evidenced by the mass manipulation of voter lists in previous years, in order to influence the election result. In this manner was grossly violated Article 188 of the Criminal Code of Montenegro, which says that it will be punished by a fine or imprisonment up to three years anyone who incorrectly draft voter list with an aim to influence the results of an election or a referendum.
When we look at the territory of Tivat as a sample of the complete voter list of Montenegro, it can be expected that in our country during the previous elections, only through this kind of abuse, illegally voted over 10,000 people, which is more than the number of votes, that for example, decided the winner in the last presidential election.
Due to the undisputable evidence that in Montenegro exists a systematic manipulation of voter lists in order to influence the election results, we invite the Chief State Prosecutor to urgently respond, and even today opened an investigation and prosecute of all those who had for years allowed in Montenegro, contrary to the Constitution and the Law, the election will of our citizens to be edited.
Vuk Maras
Director of the Monitoring Program
In the attachment please find list with the names of all persons who illegally had the right to vote in Montenegro, and after the elections were over they were deleted from the voter lists or had been granted Montenegrin citizenship.
