CEMI news February 2nd, 2009. Zlatko Vujovic – Elections - COMMENTARY for DAILY BRIEF No. 98 - INSTITUTE ALTERNATIVA'S

The decision to shorten the mandate of the Parliament of Montenegro, adopted late on Monday evening, has put an end to The dilemmas related to the date of the prospective elections and the electoral Law that will be applied thereto. At the same time, this decision has reminded us of the uneasy times in the Montenegrin past, when the Parliament's sessions were of marathon length and ran late into the night.

Although numerous hints have been put forward by the research of the public opinion that these elections will be 'routine' ones - and that there was no doubt on who the winner will be - the events related to the elections, and the hastiness of the electoral process open up a number of questions. The purpose of the gawkily moves of the key people of the ruling party in the Montenegrin parliament is rather unclear. They have mooted the electoral process in a procedurally deficient manner, thus making numerous mistakes, which – in some aspects – infringe the legality of that electoral process.

The lack of harmonization of the electoral legislation with the Constitutional provision related to the adequate representation of minorities is the result of the nearly consensual agreement of the main actors of the governing and opposition structures. None of the actors wishes to give up the minority mandates. Indeed, for different reasons. Namely, the governing party already has the support of minorities, and –naturally – does not wish to put at risk something that it already has. Conversely, the opposition – drawing from the experience of the mandates reserved for the Albanian community – does not want to allow the DPS to take over the mandates of the minorities. At another level, minority parties are paralysed by their lack of understanding of the concept of 'affirmative action'. Instead of attempting to ensure mandates for minorities, they seek to ensure mandates for the minorities' political parties. Until they accept the international standards, and until they realise that the elections can be democratic even if they are not competitive, minority parties will remain hostages to ignorance and minority peoples will be deprived of adequate representation in Parliament.

At the time of the debate on electoral legislation, NGO Centre for Monitoring (CEMI) was not allowed to take part – as an observer - to the meetings of the parliamentary working group charged with drafting electoral legislation. In fact, it is unclear with whom this debate would have taken place at all. Our attempts to explain to the representatives of the political parties how the problems related to the current electoral system could be resolved were unsuccessful in most of the cases. The reason was not that their unwillingness to listen to us. Rather, it was the fact that they could not understand us. The five books that CEMI published on this topic proved to be of no assistance at all. So did the model of new electoral legislation that we had prepared.

CEMI's proposal to introduce the Mixed Member Proportional system, based on the German model, still founds no resonance in Montenegro. Political parties are convinced that they have the exclusive right to speak about the electoral system. They forget that - or are ignorant of - the fact that the electoral system was only a mechanism of transposing the votes of the people into mandates, and that the elections are not meant to be to the benefit of the parties, but to the one of the voters: so that they can enable the citizens to have their legitimate representatives.

In light of the elections, the one bright point is the legal regulation of the financing of political parties and candidates. Based on two models proposed by CEMI, the Ministry of Finance has proposed – and the Parliament has adopted – the Law on the financing of political parties (July 2008) and the Law on the financing of the campaign for the election of the President of Montenegro, Mayor and the President of Municipality (January 2009). Both of these laws are in line with international standards. At least in the area of financing of political parties and candidates – if not in others – we will have harmonized legislation.

Author is the President of the Managing Board of the NGO Centre for Monitoring (CEMI).