The government and the opposition "remembered" to resolve the most important issues of electoral reform at a time when the parliamentary committee that is supposed to deal with this work has not existed for three months and when it is questionable whether it will be re-formed at all, because the strongest opposition actor - the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) - does not want to be part of it.
Just ten days after the DPS MP Nikola Rakočević announced that the party would not participate in the work of the Electoral Reform Committee if it were to be re-formed (because the government adopted laws on internal affairs and the National Security Agency that were controversial to some in the public), which reduced the chances of that body doing anything significant before the parliamentary elections next year to a minimum, and led to an "inflation" of proposals for resolving some of the most important issues of electoral legislation.
First, she is a member of parliament from the opposition Civic Movement (GP) URA Ana Novaković Đurović On March 19, she announced that her party would submit a bill to the parliament for the introduction of open lists. However, DPS "preceded" them in this, as Rakočević announced the day before yesterday that the party had submitted its own bill for such a regulation to parliament, while the head of the parliamentary group of the ruling Europe Now Movement (PES) Vaslije Carapić announced that PES would support DPS's proposal, but also that PES would submit amendments to the act on the voter register for the procedure, without specifying what kind of amendments they were.
Rakočević and Čarapić did not respond to questions from "Vijesti" yesterday about why their parties decided to submit these proposals for procedure now, and not while the Electoral Reform Committee still existed.
The interviewees of "Vijesti" assess that these proposals are not attempts to bring about electoral reform, but rather attempts at political positioning, that is, that they look more like part of a political campaign than a sincere intention to change electoral laws.
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NENEZIĆ: WITHOUT A COMMITTEE, THERE IS NO CONSENSUS
Senior Associate at the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Montenegro Ana Nenezic She told the newspaper that the current draft laws are not a sign that electoral reform has gained momentum, but rather the opposite - that it has lost its institutional framework and turned into a set of parallel political initiatives with no real chance of an outcome.
She stated that when the Electoral Reform Committee is not functioning, the only space in which it is possible to achieve a minimum of political consensus disappears, and according to her - without that consensus, no serious electoral reform is possible.
"In such a situation, the parties' move to unilaterally submitting legislative proposals is expected, but it should be made clear what this means: these are not attempts to pass a law, but attempts at political positioning. Through these proposals, parties communicate with voters, not with the parliamentary majority. This is why we have the paradox that there have never been more initiatives, and at the same time, the likelihood that any of them will become part of the legal system is lower than ever," Nenezić underlined.
She said that this pattern is so recognizable in the region that the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) describes it in its reports with a special term - performative legislative activity.
"This is a situation in which reform exists at the level of form, but not of substance," the interviewee adds.
Nenezić pointed out that it is important to avoid oversimplifying the topic of electoral reform, assessing that the latest composition of the committee, unlike the previous ones, has nevertheless achieved certain results.
"An agreement was reached to hold local elections in one day, the gender quota was increased to 40 percent, a new law on campaign financing was adopted, and the State Election Commission was professionalized as a permanent body (it is being transformed into the Central Election Commission). These are concrete steps forward, but what they have in common is that they did not encroach on the very core of political power," she reminded.
She stated that everything that would truly change the way government is formed - such as open lists, the regulation of the voter register and the control of registers - remained unresolved, and that the key problem is that electoral reform in Montenegro has never been just a technical issue, but a question of the distribution of power.
"In a political system in which neither side is certain that it can gain more than it can lose from reform, the natural outcome is the status quo. Therefore, it is a realistic expectation that the elections will be held again according to the rules that everyone publicly criticizes, but no one fundamentally changes. That is perhaps the most accurate description of the current situation. Everyone is in favor of reform in public, but against it in practice," Nenezić pointed out.
ĐUKANOVIĆ: CAMPAIGN, NOT REFORM
Docent at the University "Donja Gorica" Nikoleta Djukanovic She told the editorial team that it is interesting that all of the aforementioned initiatives are occurring at the very moment when the Electoral Reform Committee is not functional. She states that, even while that body existed, its work was sporadic, poorly organized, and fundamentally inefficient.
"The results that were achieved looked more like political deals than the fruit of systemic and inclusive work, especially when we talk about illegal solutions such as extending the mandate of local authorities. Additionally, the increase in allocations to political parties is directly detrimental to political pluralism, as it practically closes the space for new political actors who do not have access to these resources," she assessed.
Đukanović said that all the legal proposals that the public is witnessing today look more like part of a political campaign than a sincere attempt at reform, adding that the parties want to present themselves as the bearers of change, even though they have directly participated in the politicization of electoral institutions for years.
According to her, the essence of the idea of the committee was that it would be a place where, in addition to political parties, representatives of civil society, the academic community, and international organizations would participate, in order to reach quality and sustainable solutions.
"Instead, today we have a situation where key agreements are made outside the institutional framework, and then partial legal solutions are offered. Electoral reform must be comprehensive and coordinated, multiple laws should be amended in parallel to avoid mutual collisions and so that we do not end up in a situation where we have to amend the same laws again after a few months," said Đukanović.
AMENDMENTS TO THE LAW DO NOT CLEAN THE VOTER LIST
Answering the question of whether it is possible to clean up the voter register through amendments to the law or whether a broader process is needed, the interviewees of "Vijesti" agree that this can be just one item of that procedure.
Ana Nenezić emphasizes that the voter register is not an isolated administrative problem, but a reflection of a much deeper institutional issue, namely the state of the registers of residence and citizenship, as primary, adding that, as long as these registers are not mutually harmonized, up-to-date and subject to real control - any intervention in the Law on the Voter Register remains partial and limited in scope.
"The data we have today further highlights the scale of the problem. The 2023 census provides a relatively reliable picture of the number of residents and adults, but when this data is compared with the number of registered voters, a serious discrepancy appears. This discrepancy cannot be explained solely by migration or technical errors, but rather points to a systemic problem with all the records that form the basis of the voter register," she concluded.
Nenezić assessed that the voter list is the last link in the chain, and that if the place of residence and citizenship are not regulated, the list cannot be accurate either. However, she notes that the essence of the issue is not technical, but political. According to her, regulating the voter list almost always produces political losers, because the removal of unfoundedly registered voters directly affects the election results.
"That is precisely why, although there is a declarative consensus that the list should be 'cleaned', there is no real political willingness to carry this process through to the end. That is why we always see the same pattern: parties that in opposition strongly insist on the problem of the voter list, upon coming to power, become significantly more cautious or completely passive on this issue. The reason is simple: edited lists change political mathematics, and few governments are willing to consciously enter into a process that can reduce their electoral capacity," she said.
Nikoleta Đukanović underlined that legal solutions are important, but that without their consistent implementation they remain “a dead letter on paper.” She said that the key problems lie in disorganized residence registers, insufficiently efficient control mechanisms, and weak institutional coordination.
"Therefore, it is necessary to work in parallel on organizing records, strengthening control mechanisms, and depoliticizing the institutions that manage the electoral process. Without this, any change to the law will be limited in scope and will not lead to a substantial improvement in electoral integrity," she concluded.
How the committee “failed”
The Electoral Reform Committee was formed on December 29, 2023, and its work was originally supposed to be completed by December 31, 2024, but its mandate was extended until the end of 2025. This body had a total of 11 sessions - six were held in 2024, and five last year.
The Assembly did not adopt a draft decision to extend the work of the committee on the last day of last year, because the Speaker of the Parliament Andrija Mandić interrupted the session due to the events in Botun.
This means that Montenegro, in a year when it plans to close all chapters in negotiations with the European Union, is left without a body that is important for fulfilling the recommendations from the EU agenda and interim benchmarks in chapters 23 and 24.
In the last ten years, there have been several electoral reform committees (2013, 2018, 2020 and 2023), but none of them have successfully completed their work, mainly due to conflicts between the government and the opposition. Since the Committee has the same number of members from both the government and the opposition, the opposition has often left it - due to dissatisfaction with the government's actions - and thus blocked its work.
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