Jonica passes the Constitutional Court

The Constitutional Court of Montenegro will most likely accept the constitutional appeal of the electoral list "Snežana Jonica - Socialists of Montenegro - Let us live as Yugoslavs" for the parliamentary elections on August 30, at the session scheduled for today, "Vijesti" has learned.

The reporter judge is the former president of the Constitutional Court, Dragoljub Drašković, and in the constitutional appeal that "Vijesti" had access to, it is pointed out the countless contradictory positions of the State Electoral Commission, which previously refused to confirm the electoral list of the Socialists.

Professor Đorđije Blažić told the MINA agency yesterday that the decision of the SEC unpleasantly surprised him as a lawyer, because the explanations of the SEC, he claims, are without a single valid legal argument, and that "from this it can be determined without a doubt that the list does not meet any of the legally prescribed reasons for its rejection".

On the Court's agenda is the initiative of the Center for Civic Education to evaluate the Technical Recommendations for holding elections with the aim of epidemiological protection of voters, which was also adopted by the SEC on August 6, 8.

It concerns the right to vote of citizens in quarantine or self-isolation, who will be outside their place of residence on the day of the election and who are denied the right to vote by means of a letter from the SEC. This is in contradiction with the Law on the Election of Members of Parliament and the Constitution of Montenegro, which, among others, is pointed out by the CGE.

When it comes to Jonica's constitutional appeal, it states that the SEC ordered them to submit the party's original statute and program within 48 hours, because it was not possible to conclude from the submitted documentation whether they meet the requirements for a minority list. In the meantime, they themselves obtained the original from the Ministry of Public Administration, and Jonica expresses doubts about the SEC's motives in her appeal.

"The SEC does not state in any letter that they requested the original of the Statute and Program for the reasons they now state in the explanation, because in the Conclusion they did not dispute the right of Yugoslavs to authentic representation, but only requested that the originals be delivered to them.

With this, the appellant has strong indications that there was an intention to mislead the applicant of the list to eliminate him from the electoral process. In the second stage of the procedure, when the SEC is only competent to assess whether the applicant has removed the requested defects from the conclusion, they started to invent new defects, with the intention of preventing him from participating in the election procedure, because at that stage of the procedure there is no right to remove deficiencies," the complaint states.

It is also added that the SEC found that "persons who declared themselves as Yugoslavs in the 2011 census do not meet the conditions on any basis...in terms of religion, language or ethnicity from the rest of the population"

"The justification for this categorical claim simply does not exist....Nor is there any provision of the law that ex lege confirms this fact. It is as if the non-existence of Yugoslavs is a notorious, well-known fact that is known to everyone (except the submitters of this list). The SEC clearly considers itself the supreme authority in terms of religion, linguistics and ethnology, that their mere statement is sufficient proof that Yugoslavs simply do not exist," says Jonica.

She recalls the earlier position of the SEC, which confirmed that in the 2011 population census, 1154 of them declared themselves as Yugoslavs, which is 0,19 percent of the total number of citizens and which, according to the Law on the Election of Councilors and Members of Parliament, meets the requirements for submission election lists.

She also claims that the SEC engaged in the interpretation of her party's Statute, which she has no legal right to do, because it is in the department of the Ministry of Justice, which registers parties. The Constitutional Frog calls for the annulment of the decision of the SEC and the confirmation of the electoral list of the Socialists.