The draft amendments to the Law on Permanent and Temporary Residence Registers, proposed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP), are not the right solution for cleaning up the voter register, as they leave room for political abuse. In order to solve this decades-old problem, it is necessary to cross-reference the databases of all state bodies and thus determine whether someone is actually in Montenegro and should be registered on the voter register.
This was told to "Vijesti" by an immigration law expert. Bojan Bulgarian, commenting on the Draft Law on Registers of Residence and Temporary Residence, which the Ministry of Interior's working group for the control of the voter list sent to the Parliamentary Committee on the Political System, Judiciary and Administration.
The document stipulates, among other things, that Montenegrin citizens who plan to settle in another country, those who return from abroad to live in Montenegro, as well as those who plan to be outside of it for longer than three months - will have to report this to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
State Secretary in the MUP Novica Obradović On Monday, he announced that they had submitted an initiative for a control debate on the document to the parliamentary working body, along with the draft.
The issue of the electoral register has been used as a weapon in daily political conflicts between parties for years. The Electoral Reform Committee was supposed to deal with its settlement, but during the term of that working body (until the end of last year) - nothing was done on the issue. After the Committee's mandate was not extended, announcements appeared that the parties could initiate a solution to the problem through individual solutions, and so the head of the parliamentary group of the ruling Europe Now Movement (PES) Vasilije Carapić At the end of March, he said that the party would submit amendments to the Law on the Voters' Register for parliamentary procedure. However, they have not done so yet.
Bulgarian: Possible political abuse
Bugarin told the newspaper that he believes the draft law submitted by the Ministry of Interior to parliament is not the right way to clean up the voter register, stating that the essence of the document comes down to field checks, i.e. the human factor.
"It all comes down to a field check by the police officer who will conduct the check, which is not specified at all... So, this check is not prescribed - how it is carried out, it is not clear whether it will be transparent, and to what extent, whether it will be subject to control and verification by some other level of verification? In other words, we are coming to a potentially arbitrary decision of a state body - whether to give a person a positive field check or not," he told "Vijesti".
Bugarin stated that the law, as such, could be politically abused - regardless of whether by the current or a future government.
"... Potentially, field checks would be passed by, say, persons desirable to the authorities, while those who are perhaps less desirable (in a political, ideological or any other sense) would not pass these checks and therefore would not be able to register their residence or change their residence," the source added.
He points out that field checks would be made more difficult by the fact that the police do not have enough people, and that there is a possibility that the regulation, if adopted in this form, will be inapplicable in practice, and that, he claims, it could create a lot of problems with the initiation of a large number of administrative disputes (for citizens, if they are dissatisfied with how the law has been applied to them, to turn to the court).
Asked how the proposal from the draft that citizens must deregister their residence if they move to another country would be implemented, Bugarin replied that it is very difficult, because when people leave Montenegro in search of a better life, no one is sure whether they will settle in another country permanently.
The interviewee assessed that mostly young people leave the country, but that they do not know whether they are doing so permanently, and that this legal provision is, to say the least, meaningless. Also, he adds, the issue of controlling and monitoring the implementation of such a legal provision remains controversial, that is, how the Ministry of the Interior will control if someone has left the country and has not deregistered their place of residence, and therefore it remains unclear how sanctions will be applied in such a situation.
"... Young people are not sure that they will settle permanently in America or Germany now - they are going to try. What does it mean for someone to move permanently? No one can immediately obtain permanent residence or citizenship in another country. You have temporary residence for a certain number of years, and then you may acquire the right to permanent residence, and only after many years for citizenship. So, it is a completely unclear norm," he underlined.
The Constitution of Montenegro (Art. 45) stipulates that a citizen of Montenegro who has reached the age of 18 and has resided in the country for at least two years has the right to vote and to be elected.
When asked what the best way to solve the problem of the voter register is, Bugarin says that it would be to reach a certain "critical" number of people for whom there is an indication that they do not actually live in Montenegro through appropriate analyses, in terms of comparing and matching databases of all possible state bodies and institutions (Tax Administration, Health Fund, medical institutions, records of state border crossings...).
"And then you focus your attention and energy on that certain number of people that you came up with by matching all that data. Then you see whether those people have acquired the citizenship of those countries in the countries they live in. Because then that is a much safer way for you to fix the accuracy, credibility, and even fairness of the voter list through the application of the Law on Montenegrin Citizenship, which clearly stipulates - anyone who acquired citizenship after June 3, 2006 loses Montenegrin citizenship by force of law," he said.
He said that this is a much more transparent way, and that if someone in another country has acquired the right to vote through citizenship, then there is a valid reason to remove them from the Montenegrin voter list. However, he notes that if a Montenegrin citizen were removed from the voter list by losing their residence in Montenegro, without having the right to vote in another country, then that citizen would become “legally invisible.”
"... To take away the right to vote, which is a civilizational achievement and which many generations have fought for - because it was initially reserved only for the rich and select classes - in this way, through a potentially non-transparent procedure that would be reduced to a field check by a police officer - is not right," he claims.
Paradoxical situations and problems
Bugarin reminded that such an application of the law could potentially lead to a paradoxical situation. According to the principle of citizenship of the European Union, after Montenegro becomes a member of that community, Montenegrin citizens who are residents of a European city, e.g. Berlin, would have the right to vote in local elections there, but would not have the right to vote in any elections in Montenegro, even though they are its citizens, if they deregister their residence and are thus deleted from the electoral roll.
He sees another problem in the event that the residence is deregistered, and the Montenegrin citizen returns to Montenegro after a few years and re-registers the residence.
"... I am now going to permanently settle in Germany and deregister my residence, and therefore I am no longer on the electoral roll. However, after two years I decide to return to Montenegro and re-register my residence. According to the Constitution, the so-called residency requirement, I would then have to wait the next two years to obtain the right to vote. So, upon my return to Montenegro, I would not be able to exercise my right to vote for two years, which would discriminate against other citizens - Montenegrin citizens who have residence in Montenegro," Bugarin illustrated.
He says that if the law were to be adopted in this form, it would have to go hand in hand with amendments to the Constitution, so that the two-year residency requirement would be deleted from the Constitution, so that this legal norm would make sense and not be discriminatory.
"Also, it is a very important fact that by losing one's place of residence, a Montenegrin citizen is deprived of the use of many rights, the enjoyment of which is derived precisely from one's place of residence, and not from the fact that one is a Montenegrin citizen. Therefore, it is questionable how expedient, fair and reasonable it is, for the sake of organizing the voter register (which can be organized in other ways), to come to a situation where a significant number of our citizens lose the possibility of enjoying a significant number of rights arising from the status of residence/residency," Bugarin concluded.
Slovenia '91 erased 40.000 "unfit"
After declaring independence at the end of June 1991, Slovenia illegally erased around 40.000 of its citizens (mostly citizens of other Yugoslav republics) from the permanent population register and deprived them of their constitutionally guaranteed rights.
The decision was made in secret, so some documents are not yet available to the public.
However, the Constitutional Court there overturned that decision in dozens of cases, while the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that Slovenia had violated the European Convention on Human Rights with such a decision, and the injured parties were entitled to compensation of 20.000 euros per person.
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