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. The elections were competitive with seven confirmed candidacies for the president of Montenegro, conducted without major problems in the organization, while the fundamental rights of candidates and voters, to freely present their programs, i.e. exercise their right to vote, were mostly respected.

This was assessed at the presentation of the report on preliminary conclusions and findings "Citizen monitoring of the 2023 presidential elections", which was presented at the press conference by the Centre for Monitoring and Research (CeMI).

The head of the mission, Ana Nenezic, pointed out that the project "Citizen monitoring of the presidential elections in Montenegro 2023", which CeMI is implementing with the support of the British Embassy in Podgorica, has shown its justification.

"After 33.3 percent of the sample was realized in 20 hours and 25 minutes, just 25 minutes after the closing of the polling stations, CeMI opened its software to citizens via the website and television. "That's why our website had half a million unique visits, and televisions downloaded the data together 10 thousand times, updating the graphics that broadcast CeMI's data," Nenezic said.

She explained that the citizens had complete insight in real time as to how the data is processed and how the preliminary results are arrived at, which in the end differ from the official data of the State Election Commission (SEC) by 0.1 percent, stating that trust is built in this way among citizens.

Speaking on election day, Nenezic said that the elections were held according to the rules of the unreformed set of election laws, the implementation of which is chronically accompanied by problems that repeat from one election cycle to another.

"The multi-year recommendations of the Venice Commission, OSCE ODIHR missions and local observer organizations were not respected, nor incorporated into the electoral legislation. Comprehensive and inclusive electoral reform was absent due to the lack of political will, despite the announcements of the parliamentary majority and representatives of the executive power that it will be one of the key priorities after taking power, and after winning the parliamentary elections on August 30, 2020," she stated. Nenezic.

She pointed out that the current legal framework contains numerous legal gaps that require interpretation when applying certain key norms, illogicalities, inconsistencies and contradictions, which reduce its effectiveness.

"The body in charge of conducting elections, the SEC, is not professionalized, the majority for decision-making is still held by representatives of political parties who, when making key decisions, dominantly follow the interests of the parties they represent, which does not always include the public interest. Incomplete transparency in the work, as well as the lack of public transmission of sessions, did not contribute to increasing public trust in the decision-making process," said Nenezic.

Election administration analyst and SEC observer, Vladimir Simonovic, reminded that the candidates had to submit 8,101 voter signatures.

"However, the SEC for the first time did not allow international and domestic observation missions to have insight into candidate applications, as well as signatures of support, due to the legal interpretation of the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data (AZLP) that this would jeopardize the right to protect the personal data of the citizens of Montenegro Up," Simonovic said.

According to him, the legally guaranteed rights of observers to monitor the legality of the work of the election administration are limited in this way.

"The SEC received nine candidacy proposals and finally confirmed seven candidates, including one woman. "The State Election Commission determined and announced the preliminary election results in accordance with the legal deadline," Simonović said.

He assessed that the SEC's decision to enable citizens to verify signatures through electronic verification on their website, only after the candidacy has been confirmed, was late and dysfunctional, explaining that in addition to numerous reported abuses by citizens, the confirmed candidacy cannot be disputed, although is potentially based on illegally collected signatures of support.

"What the public is not aware of is that two sessions were held on the day when the candidacy of Mr. Milojko Spajic was discussed. At the first session held on the same day, one of the members of the SEC opened the possibility of excluding the public from that session in the evening hours. The decision of the SEC to still allow the public to that session was based on the vote of five out of ten members of the SEC present. Five out of ten SEC members present voted to close the session to the public. In this context, we can conclude that the SEC is still not ready for full transparency of work," said Simonovic.

PR coordinator of CeMI, Maja Bjelic, speaking about the media market, said that it is pluralistic, with the presence of a large number of traditional media.

"However, private media are dominantly controlled through a foreign ownership structure that influences their editorial policy. Of all televisions with national coverage, only one has a predominantly Montenegrin ownership structure. In this way, a greater presence of a number of candidates in the public space was ensured," said Bjelic.

On the other hand, as she added, the national public service RTCG respected the legal requirements and provided balanced coverage of the campaign of all presidential candidates.

"However, the outdated approach in the conception of political debates, along with the rigidity of the rules, did not give space to the candidates to present their programs in a meaningful and essential way, i.e. to directly cross arguments, which would provide the opportunity for citizens to receive full information before making an informed decision," said Bjelic. .

According to her, the participants were able to campaign freely, even in the short period of the campaign, and basic freedoms were respected.

"The campaign was competitive and voters were offered a variety of choices." "The tone was mostly neutral and focused on promises about the economic prosperity of the country and the acceleration of the European integration process," said Bjelic.

Speaking about the election silence, Bjelic said that the propaganda of political parties through social networks came to the fore on March 18.

"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)," explained Bjelic.

She pointed out that there is a noticeable increase in hidden advertising, i.e. promotional activities without legally prescribed features, which are realized, for the most part, in daily news broadcasts.

"The Agency for Electronic Media (AEM) showed a proactive approach despite the legal restrictions in the part of non-implementation of penal provisions that do not give them the possibility of punishing electronic media that violate prescribed legal obligations, and for the first time published a preliminary media monitoring report that accurately shows the representation of individual candidates in the media, and made it available to the public," said Bjelic.

She pointed out that the preliminary report confirmed the advantage and greater presence of a number of candidates in private electronic media.

"The control mechanism for monitoring the work of the media during the election campaign has not been established, contrary to the legal provisions of the Law on the Election of Councilors and Members of Parliament." Namely, the Committee for monitoring and supervising the application of the provisions of the Law in the part of media obligations in the pre-election campaign, which the Parliament of Montenegro was obliged to form, was not formed and the control mechanism was missing", said Bjelic.

Regarding the misuse of state resources during the election campaign, as she added, the ASK received 55 complaints, 28 were dismissed and ten were rejected, while 17 cases are pending.

Legal analyst, Ognjen Mitrovic, recalled that the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) formed a coordination team to monitor the implementation of obligations arising from election laws, however, contrary to earlier practice, members of domestic observation missions were not involved in the work of the team.

"MUP has published a numerical tabular presentation of data on the changes in the voter list, as a whole and by local self-government units, in relation to the voter list on which the previous elections were held. Inspection of the voter list was made possible to the representatives of the CeMI observation mission, after a letter and request was sent to the MUP," Mitrovic said.

He said that the collisions of legal norms in the part related to the beginning of the election campaign make it impossible to precisely determine the beginning of the campaign and the supervision of the competent institutions, primarily the APC.

"The shortcomings of the regulatory framework have had a negative impact on the transparency and accountability of campaign financing." Some of the candidates used this delay to start the campaign before the official confirmation of the candidacy and without opening a separate account for financing the election campaign, which made it impossible to control the origin of the financial resources needed for the implementation of the campaign," warned Mitrovic.

He pointed out that there were numerous irregularities, but most of them stemmed from an imprecise legal framework and initial disagreements among the members of the electoral commissions.

"However, the secrecy of voting was partially compromised due to the use of electronic devices, numerous reported photographs of ballots at polling stations, after voting, and keeping parallel records of political party representatives during election day. In total, the mentioned irregularities did not substantially disrupt the voting procedure," concluded Mitrovic.

When asked by a journalist how she comments on the illogicalities observed in the preliminary data and the example of candidate Andrija Mandic who received 800 votes in Tuzi, Nenezic explained that CeMI made a projection of the results based on a sample.

"When you do projections on a sample basis, we give projections within regions." We do not have data related to specific municipalities. "I haven't had the opportunity to look at the data related to individual municipalities, and if that's okay with you, give us a few days and we'll come out with the position of the organization," Nenezic said.

Asked how they comment on the fact that non-governmental organizations have been announcing preliminary election results before the SEC for years, Nenezic said that the value of Montenegro is that it has non-governmental organizations that observe the elections, and that have the ability and capacity to come out with reliable results within 25 minutes after the polling stations. data and thereby prevent political parties from manipulating the behavior of citizens or from sending unverified or incorrect information.

"On the other hand, considering that CeMI has been doing this for 23 years, we expected that in that period the SEC would professionalize and develop the capacities to the necessary level to fully take over what should be their role, which is to be the ones who will come out after 25 minutes after the closing of the polling stations with the first screenings. Until we wait for that and until we change the legal framework, thereby professionalizing the SEC, CeMI is here and we will continue to do our job as best we can in the interest of the public," said Nenezic.

She announced that CeMI will monitor the second round of presidential elections scheduled for April 2.