Centre for Civic Education (CCE), in the light of the just completed presidential elections, upon which both candidates declared victory, calls the State Election Commission (SEC) to ensure the presence of relevant international representatives, and especially the representatives of the European Commission (EC) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), in order to thoroughly review the entire election material and determine the undeniable result. This is necessary in order to the actual progress of democratic processes in Montenegro, stabilization of the eventual tensions and the strengthening of confidence into institutions of the system.
CCE warns the SEC that it would be irresponsible and utterly unnecessary to declare any results without providing in advance the supervision of the required international entities. This is particularly important considering that the elections were ccompanied by many and reasonable doubts of abuse of the state resources and electoral processes themselves, for the purpose of electoral engineering that goes in favor of the governing structure. To make it even worse, none of the authorized state institution did not react to the present hyper-production of evidence regarding pressures on voters and designing of systems for these pressures. Rather than to contribute through the legally prescribed procedures to full clarification of the reasonable doubts of electoral fraud, the institutions have with their silence further bolstered these doubts and brought into question the regularity of presidential elections just held, particularly bearing in mind that the difference between the candidates was less than 2%, which could change the election result in the case of determining the irregularities to a few polling stations. Such circumstances require specific state institutions responsibility, but also provide a chance for them to prove as professional and depoliticized.
CCE urges all actors of the electoral process to submit required evidence regarding the electoral irregularities as a contribution to the determination of the final and genuine results of these very important elections.
CCE assesses that is more than clear that the SEC alone can not bring to the end the responsibility that circumstances have placed before it for solving, and it is therefore necessary to invite representatives of the European Commission and the OSCE to take part so that this issue could fully and properly be resolved.
Daliborka Uljarević, Executive Director