The legal framework for conducting the elections was partially changed, despite the fact that the Law on the Election of Deputies and Members of Parliament remained unchanged due to the failed electoral reform that could not receive two-thirds support in the Montenegrin Parliament. The necessity of applying the law protecting people's health, and in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, has affected a greater degree of ambiguity regarding the rules for the implementation of the electoral process, which negatively affect the preparation of the elections, creating great pressure in terms of the legality and constitutionality of the actions of the electoral administration, primarily State election commissions.
The State Election Commission (SEC) generally respected the statutory deadlines for the implementation of election activities. The SEC did not show a sufficient level of responsibility when adopting comprehensive and clear recommendations for health-safe holding of elections. The adoption of regulations and documents that were abolished by the Constitutional Court as unconstitutional is an indicator of insufficient expertise of SEC members, but also of political irresponsibility because, according to their spokesperson, they consciously adopted unconstitutional regulations. The cancellation of certain provisions of the Technical Recommendations led to the postponement of certain actions that the Commission planned to implement. The SEC did not ensure full transparency of its work even in this election process, because the presence of the media at the sessions was not ensured, as well as the "live" transmission of the sessions via the Internet, which is the practice of many countries in the world. The part of the State Election Commission that should be especially praised is the expert service of the SEC, which showed a high level of professionalism and openness to cooperation with non-governmental organizations.
Municipal Election Commissions (MECs) generally carried out their activities in accordance with the law. Although there were certain doubts when determining the members of the election committees, the decisions of the MEC were in accordance with the law, which is confirmed by the fact that all five objections to their work, which were submitted to the State Election Commission, as well as one appeal to the Constitutional Court, were rejected. . 1,217 electoral commissions (BO) were formed, whose members should be trained on the conduct of elections. The training of polling boards is delayed due to the aforementioned cancellation of certain provisions of the Technical Recommendations, which can be a problem, especially in the case of presidents of polling boards who perform this function for the first time, and in complex circumstances caused by the COVID-19 circumstances.
The electoral roll has 540,026 voters, which is 7,427 more than in the 2018 presidential elections, while the total number of polling stations has increased by four and amounts to 1,217 BM. 6,288 voters who have an old identity card or passport (issued before 2008) and who have not submitted a request for the issuance of new documents, as well as 1,299 voters who do not have any identity document and have not submitted a request for the issuance of identity documents, are entered in the voter list. The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) has shown a high level of readiness to cooperate with representatives of the civil sector by forming an Expert Team to monitor the up-to-dateness and accuracy of the voter list. The Ministry of Interior made it possible for citizens to directly check whether they are on the voter list and also get answers to their questions.
In this election cycle as well, control of the voter list is carried out with the AFIS system (system for automatic identification of fingerprints), with the presence of domestic and foreign observers. The control began on August 25 and is ongoing. Through a public campaign and increased involvement of the competent services of the MUP, the number of persons without a valid document was reduced from more than 50,000 voters to around 23,000 on the day of closing the voter list. This problem was definitively solved by the SEC's decision to allow voters without valid IDs to vote.
The possibility of misuse of citizens' signatures during the collection of signatures by electoral lists remained high, as in previous election processes due to the absence of prevention procedures.
The decision of the State Election Commission regarding the case of registration of the candidate list of the Socialists of Montenegro, which was confirmed by the Constitutional Court, is not adequately explained, causes legal uncertainty and opens up space for discrimination against less numerous national minorities. The competent municipal election commissions did not indicate the necessity of changing the electoral list due to non-respect of gender quotas in the two electoral lists for local elections in Andrijevica and Budva, which violated the Law.
By disobeying the provisions of the law on the less represented sex, the legislator's intention when adopting this solution, which is to encourage women to greater political participation, becomes meaningless.
The election campaign for the upcoming elections is being conducted in uncertain and irregular circumstances and conditions, both due to inconsistent legal provisions governing the issue of the start and duration of the election campaign, and due to the lack of institutional rules and guidelines for the implementation of the election campaign in COVID-19 conditions.
The ubiquity of the "official campaign", i.e. the high degree of presence of public officials during the pre-election campaign through the promotion and opening of various facilities and infrastructure projects, of both the President of Montenegro, the President and the majority of members of the Government of Montenegro, and local self-government officials is worrying. CeMI warns that in this way Article 50a of the Law on the Election of Councilors and Members of Parliament is directly violated and the principle of equality of all participants in the electoral process is threatened, that a clear institutional advantage of the ruling coalition is created, but also that the prescribed misdemeanor penalties for the aforementioned violations are not sufficient and cannot be deterrent.
The current election campaign, dominantly conditioned by the rules of the National Coordinating Body for Infectious Diseases (NKT) in relation to the epidemiological situation, is of lower intensity compared to previous election cycles, without a significant number of public gatherings. The campaign took place for the most part, especially during the month of July, in the online space, with an emphasis on the YouTube channel and social networks, while in the later period the campaign intensified, and political entities used almost all techniques of promoting their pre-election programs: audio-visual marketing , billboards, distribution of propaganda material, contact with voters in the field and door-to-door campaign. As the campaign progresses, elements of the negative campaign are more and more noticeable. In the second part of the campaign, the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), despite the initial announcement that it would not interfere in the election campaign, became its active participant, justifying such a relationship with the need to fight for the repeal of the Law on Freedom of Religion. With the involvement of the Serbian Orthodox Church, protest rallies have been renewed, despite the fact that they are organized illegally. The SPC's involvement in the campaign also raises the issue of campaign financing, where financing by religious communities is prohibited. This rather sensitive issue should be the subject of action by APC.
For the parliamentary elections in 2020, 11 election lists were confirmed, which were allocated budget funds in the amount of 43,051.02 euros per list by the deadline provided by law for the distribution of 20% of funds for election campaign expenses (August 12). For the local elections in Andrijevica, three lists were confirmed, and funds in the amount of 248.06 euros per list were distributed until August 12. Seven election lists were announced in Budva, each of which received 1,730.88 euros by the mentioned date. In the same time interval for the local elections in Gusinje, six electoral lists were confirmed, each of which received 90.31 euros.
In the local elections in Kotor, nine lists were confirmed, which received 721.02 euros each by August 12. In Tivat, seven election lists were announced, to which 759.71 euros were distributed by the legally prescribed deadline for the distribution of funds. Special accounts for election campaign financing were opened by all 11 political entities participating in the parliamentary elections, which is an improvement compared to the previous parliamentary elections when there were several entities that did not fulfill this obligation. Ten political entities notified the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption about opening an account within the deadline provided by law, and only the Croatian Reform Party fulfilled this obligation two days after the expiration of the legal deadline.
The Agency for the Prevention of Corruption has shown its willingness to cooperate with non-governmental organizations through meetings of the working group for monitoring campaign financing on a weekly basis. Considering the changes in the law, and due to the special circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (AKA) should pay more attention to the control of state bodies, companies in which the state is the founder and/or majority or partial owner and control in the field of transparency of social benefits. The best example of insufficient quality control by the Agency is some smaller municipalities (Andrijevica, Pluzine), which allocated the most for one-time financial assistance from the budget reserve. In the current course of the campaign, due to violations of the provisions of the Law, 287 proceedings were initiated against authorities and 83 proceedings against political entities. The Agency for the Prevention of Corruption has carried out most of the controls that it envisaged in its control and supervision plan, but still has not initiated proceedings in cases that cause the greatest public attention. In the Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica, a case was established with the aim of establishing all the facts and circumstances of the event in question, which is in the investigation phase. In addition, the case of accusations by the vice-president of the Assembly and the Forza party against coalition partners from the government of committing political corruption in Ulcinj, promising and carrying out employment in order to secure votes, is indicative. The Parliament of Montenegro adopted the umbrella Law on Media and the Law on Radio and Television of Montenegro (RTCG) after the announcement of the elections, at the end of July 2020 after the announcement of the elections. In this way, legal uncertainty was created and not enough time was left for both the media and political subjects to become familiar with the solutions of the newly adopted laws. In addition, the amendments to the Law on the Financing of Political Entities and Election Campaigns, which was adopted by the Parliament half a year earlier, and whose provisions regulate the conduct of the media during the election campaign, as well as the competence of the APC in this direction, further contribute to uncertainty and are not a good indicator for a uniform and equal treatment of all electoral subjects.
The media scene in Montenegro is diverse and there are over 150 media operating on the market, i.e. 22 televisions, 53 radios, the number of registered electronic publications, i.e. informational portals is 70, while 4 daily newspapers, 1 weekly magazine and 1 news agency operate. Although pluralistic, the media scene is deeply divided politically, with a clear observation of political preferences in relation to published content. The Parliament of Montenegro did not establish a Committee to monitor the implementation of the Law on the Election of Councilors and Members of Parliament in the part related to the media, which was its legal obligation.
The absence of a large number of traditional debates in key talk shows, both with public broadcasters and with most private media, is noticeable, and the conceptual solution for the RTCG scenario, which is basically identical to the pre-election solution of the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) can be misleading to voters and fall under covert media representation, which is contrary to Article 8 of the AEM regulations. This was also the reason for numerous reactions from representatives of other election lists and accusations of RTCG's bias in reporting, which were further deepened by the banning of the political spot "Black on White" for the use of a hologram of the president of the country. The Agency for Electronic Media (AEM) is authorized to supervise the media during the campaign and timely adopted the Rulebook on rights and obligations of broadcasters during the election campaign. Considering the situation with the corona virus in Montenegro, social networks played an important role during the campaign.
A great activity of political parties has been registered, which has been increasing since the end of June, that is, since the elections were officially announced. In the pre-election period, DCG, DF, Prava CG, SNP, DPS, URA, SD, SPD were dominant on social networks, while minority parties were slightly less active. Bearing in mind that there is no legislative framework in Montenegro that explicitly regulates online media and social networks, it is important to note that from August 5, 2020, the obligation to comply with the Facebook rules of political advertising applies to all political entities in Montenegro. In this regard, all submitted data about the authorized advertiser, i.e. the author of the ad, submitted to Facebook, will be available in the Ad Library for the next 7 years. In the pre-election period, the most active media on the Facebook platform, i.e. the most content was created and shared by FOS Media, followed by Portal Analitika, Portal Standard, Portal Antena M, Informativni portal IN4S, Kolektiv.me, Vijesti, and RTCG Portal, and in addition to great activity political parties and politicians on social networks, during the election campaigns they resorted to the use of various pages, groups and mime profiles in order to spread their messages among voters.
The participation of women on electoral lists is slightly higher than in 2016, but in the largest percentage (close to 40%) women are still allocated to every fourth place on the electoral list, which is the legal minimum. On the other hand, at the local level, irregularities were observed in the sphere of participation of the less represented sex, during the confirmation of two electoral lists. The electoral lists "For the future of Andrijevica - SNP - NSD" and "Nova Budva - Ilija Gigovic" did not comply with the legal provision that there must be at least one candidate, member of the less represented sex, which is a direct violation of the Law on the Election of Councilors and Members of Parliament.
Download: Interim report.