The Centre for Monitoring and Research (CeMI) will monitor the election process during parliamentary elections, monitor irregularities and misuse of state resources, as well as the work of competent institutions, and will provide monitoring of the election day on election day with inclusions, as well as the projection of election results.

This was announced at the CeMI press conference on the occasion of the announcement of the 2023 parliamentary election monitoring mission, which is being implemented as part of a project supported by the British Embassy in Podgorica.

The head of the mission, Ana Nenezic, said that the goal of the Citizens' Monitoring of the 2023 parliamentary elections project is to contribute to the preservation of electoral integrity in Montenegro.

"Given that this time we are talking about early parliamentary elections and that 17 ballots have been submitted, we expect this election process to be significantly more complex than was the case with the presidential elections." That was the reason why CeMI decided to accredit over a thousand observers, who will be deployed at all polling stations in Montenegro," said Nenezic in the PR Center.

According to her, the mission will consist of a team of experts and analysts.

"We will monitor the work of the State Election Commission (SEC), municipal election commissions, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs." During the election day, we will have regular press conferences where we will announce the turnout, comparative data compared to previous years, possible irregularities," said Nenezic.

She said that CeMI will do its best to come out with the projections of the election results as soon as possible, explaining that this time CeMI will use the methodology of parallel counting of polling stations.

"You are used to us being fast." Last time we went out in the first 20 minutes after the polls closed. This time, due to the complexity of the process, it will be a little later. We will be present during the entire election day and you can expect the first preliminary projections of the election results from us," said Nenezic.

She pointed out that it was very important for CeMI to be present at the sessions of the SEC and to review what the list and collation applications are in this period, in order to see if they meet the requirements in terms of documentation, but also that they could verify submitted signatures.

"Unfortunately, this time too the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data has made a decision that we do not understand or see their room for interference in the electoral process to not allow the observation missions to have an insight into the signatures of the electoral lists", said Nenezic.

She recalled the earlier practice related to the previous parliamentary elections, where there were problems with the method of collecting the signatures themselves.

"Voter lists are available only to political parties." In previous years as well, a large number of criminal charges were filed due to misuse of signatures of support. I hope we don't have that practice this time. However, previous experiences teach us that we can expect something like that," said Nenezic.

She also pointed to the problem that citizens can check whether their signatures of support have been misused only after the electoral lists have been confirmed.

"We are happy that this time the SEC will be more transparent and that it will broadcast its sessions," Nenezic added.

She said that through CeMI's Fair Elections application, which is available in the Play Store and on the ferizbori.me website, all irregularities, misuse of state resources, foreign influences, as well as anything that citizens think could affect the election itself, can be reported. process.

Nenezic said that most of the previous election processes were characterized by the abuse of state resources, by a functionary campaign, and that this had a significant impact on the advantage of those in power.

"CeMI will focus on that possibility this time, bearing in mind that the abuse of state resources does not differ in relation to who exercises power." From what we see so far, we think it will go in a similar direction. However, we hope that the new majority in power has reached a sufficient level of democratic development that what we once criticized together will not be a problem this time during these parliamentary elections," concluded Nenezic.

Members of the mission were also presented at the press conference: legal analyst Ognjen Mitrovic, political campaign financing analyst Milos Vukanovic and election administration analyst and SEC observer Vladimir Simonovic.