MANS submitted today to the Committee on Political System, Judiciary and Administration and the Committee on monitoring the application of laws and other regulations important for building trust in the election process of the Parliament of Montenegro initiatives, requesting urgent scheduling of sessions of those working bodies. The reason for such initiatives is the problem that came into light when it was revealed that the ID cards of Montenegrin citizens were not biometric. According to the law, a citizen can vote only after presenting a biometric personal document.
Article 80 of the Law on Election of Councilors and Members of Parliament clearly and unambiguously lays down that „the voter proves his/her identity by his/her biometric ID card or passport“ and further defines that the voter cannot vote without previously proving his/her identity, i.e. without biometric ID card or passport.
That provision is the result of a parliamentary debate that lasted for month, and the purpose of which was to build trust in the electoral process and define mechanisms that would mitigate illegal influence on the election process and citizens’ free will. Therefore, the Parliament has set out in the law that a person can vote only by presenting biometric ID card or passport, as those documents are much more difficult to forge than non-biometric ones.
However, it is now clear that the Parliament based such decision partly on incorrect information that had come from the Ministry of Interior, which never informed that Parliament nor the public that our citizens did not have biometric ID cards. Thus, not only institutions but Montenegrin citizens as well had been misled by the Ministry of Interior, which had made them believe that they had had ID cards that were difficult to forge, until few days ago, when French experts finally confirmed that it was not the case.
Experts of the renowned French company “Safran” have announced that our ID cards are not biometric, but ordinary plastic cards. After that, nobody has disputed that fact, including the Minister of Interior, Jusuf Kalamperovic, who was in charge of the procurement of the new ID cards and passports back in 2007.
However, those arguments were not sufficient for the State Election Commission to initiate a serious debate and find a solution that was not contrary to the Law on Election of Councilors and Members of Parliament. Instead, their politically motivated decision has suspended legal provision that would ensure that voters are identified by biometric ID cards of passports, thus seriously jeopardizing lawfulness and legitimacy of the electoral process.
Therefore, we think it is necessary that parliamentary committees urgently deal with this issue and find an adequate solution that will not jeopardize integrity of the electoral process and ensure that the elections are carried out in a legitimate manner. That is why we have required the Committee on Political System, Judiciary and Administration, which is the competent body for the Law on Election of Councilors and Members of Parliament, and the Committee on monitoring the application of laws and other regulations important for building trust in the election process to urgently organize sessions to discuss this topic. At those sessions, according to our proposal, the committees would discuss the controversial opinion given by the SEC and make adequate recommendations and conclusions to ensure legitimacy of the electoral process.
We urge both parliamentary committees to urgently hold emergency sessions and take a stand over the problem arising from the fact that Montenegrin citizens do not have biometric ID cards and the law says they need them in order to vote, as well as to solve the problem in a lawful manner.
Vuk Maras
Monitoring Program Director
