The Centre for Monitoring and Research (CeMI) called on the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) to implement actions in accordance with the decision of the State Election Commission (SEC) and positive legal regulations and respect the deadlines defined for the upcoming early parliamentary elections, the organization announced.

We express our concern due to the inconsistency in the actions of the institutions related to the preparatory actions for the upcoming early parliamentary elections.

The State Election Commission has adopted a calendar of deadlines for the implementation of electoral actions in the elections for the election of deputies to the Assembly of Montenegro, which will be held on June 11, 2023. On the basis of this document, CeMI also started preparing a mission that will monitor the election process through the concept of citizen monitoring of elections," they explained in a statement from CeMI.

We were unable to monitor the legality of the preparatory actions at the start due to the fact that the MUP is obliged to publicly publish, within 48 hours from the day of the announcement of the elections, in all daily newspapers published in Montenegro and on its website a numerical tabular presentation of data on the changes made in voter list as a whole and by local self-government units in relation to the voter list on which the previous elections were held at the state level (Article 17 paragraph 1 of the Law on the Voter List).

The Ministry of Interior did not fulfill the obligation specified by law, although the SEC prescribed a deadline of March 19, 2023 for this activity. In addition, the MUP is obliged to, within three days from the date of announcing the election, present the voter's list through public information and on its website, for the voters to see, and to inform the voters about the time and method of the review, and the possibility to request a change of the registered data in the electoral roll. (Article 16 of the Law on Voters' List), the SEC defines the deadline until March 20, 2023 at the latest. This legal obligation has not been implemented either.

In this way, the MUP threatens the legality of the electoral process and the upcoming parliamentary elections.