CeMI Citizen monitoring of elections Montenegro - Parliamentary and local elections, September 2, 2020 Report on preliminary conclusions and findings September 2, 2020 The election process was marked by the failure of the State Election Commission, numerous irregularities in the work of election committees, and a strong official campaign that made invisible border between the state and ruling parties. The scope and character of the irregularities did not threaten the regularity of the overall election process, and the election result faithfully reflects the expressed electoral will of the citizens. For the first time in the history of Montenegro, no political party questioned the election result.
This report is a continuation of the findings and conclusions published in the interim report published by CeMI on April 26, 2020, and these two reports should be viewed as a single entity. This report covers the period from August 26 to September 1. 2020. The year. The CeMI observation mission for these elections accredited a total of 1,355 observers to monitor the election process. The mission consisted of members of a narrow team consisting of: (1) head of mission, (2) deputy head of mission, (3) election expert, (4) legal expert, (5) parallel vote counting expert and (6) observer network coordinator . CeMI has also engaged a network of local coordinators.
As part of the parliamentary and local monitoring project, CeMI developed the web and mobile application "Fer izbori" (www.ferizbori.me) through which citizens and observers had the opportunity to report observed irregularities or violations of their voting rights. The application also enabled citizens to follow live projections of election results, as well as to be informed about their voting rights.
The Centre for Monitoring and Research CeMI would like to thank the British Embassy Podgorica, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway in Belgrade, who financially supported the project of civil monitoring of parliamentary and local elections and enabled the implementation of this mission. CeMI would also like to express its gratitude to all representatives of the election administration, state bodies, political parties, international observation missions and domestic non-governmental organizations with whom cooperation was established on the implementation of this mission. The findings presented in this report represent the views of the authors and CeMI, and not necessarily the views of the donors mentioned.
The Centre for Monitoring and Research CeMI is a non-governmental organization founded in March 2000, which has been continuously monitoring elections since 2000. CeMI has overseen all national elections since 2001, with the exception of the presidential elections held in 2013. CeMI is the founder of the European network of election monitoring organizations ENEMO (www.enemo.eu), which it chairs in the period 2017-2020. year. The president of CeMI is a member of the board of directors of the Global Network of Domestic Election Observers (2018-2021) (www.gndem.org). Through ENEMO and OSCE ODIHR, CeMI members and experts participated in numerous international observation missions as experts, long-term and short-term observers, and 8 times a CeMI expert was the head of international observation missions (Ukraine, Serbia, Armenia and Kosovo).
PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
The election day passed in a peaceful atmosphere, and the nature and scope of the irregularities did not threaten the regularity of the overall election process. All actors of the election process accepted the election results, which makes these elections unique in Montenegrin history. The period immediately after the elections was marked by cases of violence against members of national minorities and dissidents by supporters of the new ruling majority. Several buildings of the parties of the coalition that lost the majority after the elections were demolished, as well as the damaged vehicle of the public service RTCG, which was reporting from the celebration of the parties that won the majority.
The elections were held within the amended legal framework, however, despite the amendments, not all recommendations of the Venice Commission, OSCE ODIHR missions and domestic observer organizations were followed. A comprehensive and inclusive electoral reform has been absent due to the lack of political support that would be confirmed by the necessary 2/3 majority in parliament. The legal framework contains illogicalities, inconsistencies and contradictions as a result of frequent amendments.
The electoral system places members of the Roma in an unequal position, who do not have equal status with members of the minority community, which participates in a similar percentage in the total population. The system of differential legal censuses, which gives minorities a privileged position, contains illogicalities, which can lead to an effect that is in disagreement with the concept of positive discrimination of minority peoples.
Voter turnout of 76.7% is higher than in all parliamentary elections held after 2006, despite the fact that the elections were held during the COVID 19 pandemic.
All members of the permanent composition participated in the work of the SEC in the last phase of the election process, and in addition, all electoral lists appointed authorized representatives, which strengthened the legitimacy of this body's decision-making.
Also, CeMI points out that the State Election Commission, by adopting an opinion rather than changing the Rules on voting by letter, showed a lack of responsibility and a proactive approach. In the last phase of the election process (from August 26 to election day), the State Election Commission issued two opinions regarding the implementation of voting by letter. In this way, more detailed instructions were given for voting by letter, but it was still not clear what happens in the event that members of the electoral committee do not arrive to vote for persons who reside in a certain municipality, but are not in its territory. CeMI pointed out this risk in its announcement during the election day.
CeMI observers found that the training of the members of the polling boards was uneven. Namely, no mechanisms have been provided to establish that all members of the electoral commissions attended online trainings via television or downloaded video content from the website of the State Election Commission. Also, many members of the polling committee asked to receive printed material after the training, and some presidents of municipal election commissions expressed the initiative to conduct additional training for members of the polling committee. The state election commission did not hold sessions on election day because no objections were filed against municipal election commissions during election day.
The State Election Commission determined and announced the preliminary election results in accordance with the legal deadline.
The results were determined without a vote of the members of the Commission, as was the case in the previous election processes. During the election day, there were no objections to the work of the municipal election commissions. In the work of some municipal election commissions (Budva, Danilovgrad, Plav) there was a problem with an insufficient number of ballots or defective ballots, but that problem was solved by taking ballots from the reserve within the deadline provided by law.
Election day was marked by numerous irregularities that appeared in a similar form at a relatively large number of polling stations. The most common irregularities were: 1. failure to comply with the obligation to remove the mask during identification 2. violation of voting secrecy and 3. failure to comply with the Technical Recommendations of the State Election Commission and the measures of the National Coordination Body.
Irregularities in the majority of cases were the result of the lack of training of the polling boards and did not affect the regularity of the elections. The process of opening polling stations was rated by CeMI observers with an average rating of 4.36, the voting process with 4.36. while the procedure of closing the polling stations and counting the votes was rated with an average rating of 4.46.
The election campaign began before the confirmation of the electoral lists, and almost all techniques of promoting the program of political entities were used, among which video clips and advertising via social networks were dominant, which did not stop even during the period of pre-election silence. When it comes to election silence, the propaganda of political parties through social networks came to the fore on August 29.
The most important reason for this is the inconsistency of the solutions in the relevant laws, i.e. The Law on the Election of Councilors and Members of Parliament (election propaganda lasts until 24 hours before the day of the election) and the Law on the Financing of Political Entities and Election Campaigns (election propaganda lasts until the day of the election). In relation to traditional, as well as online media, the rules of media advertising of political parties were respected during the pre-election silence, and there was no political content in which the symbols and slogans of political parties stood out. However, the same rules are not respected by political parties on social networks.
An extremely aggressive campaign was conducted on social networks. It is especially important to point out that the materials posted by political subjects on the Internet also contain content with negative campaign elements that are not allowed to be broadcast on traditional media due to a number of factors, such as the weaker election results of some electoral subjects and the distribution of women on electoral lists, according to the current schedule mandate, the participation of women in the Montenegrin parliament will be significantly less than it was immediately before the elections, so women will participate with 22.2% compared to the previous 29.6%. In this way, the representativeness of women in the Montenegrin parliament falls below the world average, which according to the latest data is 24.6%. The percentage representation of national parties of minority peoples in the Parliament after these elections is 4.93% and is at the same level as after the 2016 elections, and less than after the 2012 elections, when it was 7.40%.
The complete report is available HERE