Despite the fact that the number of voters and residents in Montenegro is slowly approaching the equalization limit, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) claims that they have done everything in their power to sort out the Central Voters' List (CBS).
Also, they repeat that the number of voters and the number of inhabitants cannot be compared, because they are different data.
According to the official information of the Ministry, which he manages Filip Adzic (GP URA), there were 543.151 registered voters in CBS ten days ago. When it comes to the number of inhabitants, according to the information of the Directorate for Statistics, Monstat, they are about 620.000, which means that about 87 percent of citizens have the right to vote.
Parliamentary elections are on June 11.
Although there were earlier alarms about the excessive number of voters, then and now, the MUP argued that "the voter list is an electronic collection of personal data of Montenegrin citizens who have the right to vote, which is formed on the basis of data from the register place of residence, register of Montenegrin citizens and registers of births and deaths, i.e. original registers".
The disorganized voter list is pointed out before every election.
Answering the question of "Vijesti" about what they are doing to fix it, considering the standard of the European Union that the ratio of the number of voters to the population is on average 70 percent, the MUP stated that they had undertaken several activities in the previous period - from checking double of voters, deletion of foreigners and revocation of citizenship of those who have a double....
Thus, as they add, voters who lost the right to vote due to death, loss of citizenship and deregistration of residence from Montenegro are deleted from it.
It is added that the Ministry of Interior "continually and outside the time covered by the election campaign" controls and updates the registers that are the basis for the formation of the voter list.
They state that they are doing this on the basis of administrative procedures initiated by citizens at their personal request, as well as that before the local and state elections they activated the AFIS system, i.e. the procedure of deduplication of photos of voters' fingerprints in the voter list.
On that occasion, they explain, no irregularities were found.
Also, the Ministry of Internal Affairs responded that the procedure for the loss of Montenegrin citizenship is being conducted for those persons who, by examining the records of crossing the state border, have determined that they crossed it with identification documents of another state. They did not specify how many of these citizens there are.
At the same time, about 16.000 people who have not taken out or changed their personal documents since 2008 are being checked.
"...In this sense, the organizational units of this Ministry sent invitations to citizens whose identity card validity period has expired, as well as to citizens who have not submitted a request for the issuance of an identity card even after the expiration of three months from the age of majority, if their identity card is issued for the first time, in accordance with the provisions of the law, in order to submit a request for the issuance or replacement of an identity card", the Ministry of Interior announced.
They also state that based on the conclusions of the Council for the Control of the Voter List, which was formed by the Government, analyzes were carried out for about 21.000 foreigners with approved permanent residence, which is about 70 percent of the total number in Montenegro.
"Approximately 2.500 persons were deleted from the register of foreigners with approved permanent residence in the period from 19/04/2021 to 29/07/2022... and after the factual situation was indisputably established", the Ministry of Interior claims.
The Ministry reminds that, following the application of some NGOs, they requested the verification of data for individual citizens who have the right to vote elsewhere, but that they did not solve it because, as they state, colleagues from the environment refused to provide the data.
Let's remind that CeMI announced earlier that part of the voters have the right to vote in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. President of the Board of Directors of CeMI Zlatko Vujović said after the local elections in Nikšić that through research they found data that 961 people were registered in the electoral register of Montenegro and Serbia, which is a violation of the law".
In their answers to "News" from the MUP, they explain that the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data and Free Access to Information ordered them to "physically destroy or delete the lists" that they rejected from the NGO and checked.
The cleaning of the voter list is carried out, as they explained, on the basis of the Law on Amendments to the Law on Residence and Residence Registers, which began to be applied on January 18 of this year. On this basis, the registration of changes of residence, i.e. changes of residence from municipality to municipality on the territory of Montenegro, is controlled. However, the legal basis for deregistration of residence ex officio if a Montenegrin citizen has settled in another country still does not exist.
The court on the president on May 12, some parties associate it with the handing over of the paper
Some parties are tying the submission of election lists for the parliamentary elections on June 11 to the session of the Constitutional Court on May 12. On his agenda, as published on the website of that court, is the "Initiative for the initiation of the procedure for the evaluation of the constitutionality of the Law on Amendments to the Law on the President of Montenegro".
The Constitutional Court will then decide whether to consider the constitutionality of the law or to reject the proposal, and the judges will determine the final position only later. So, even after May 12, the contested provisions, which mainly concern the narrowing of the powers of the head of state, will remain in force.
"News" explained that the law on the submission of election lists is connected because the president of the country, Milo Đukanović, called the elections based on the powers he has under the Law on the President.
The deadline for submitting election lists is May 16.
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