Yesterday’s State Election Commission’s (DIK) decision to annul the voting in five polling stations in Berane after nearly a month since the local elections there were held and to repeat the elections is a direct attack on the legal order and basic democratic principles, the Democrats leader Aleksa Becic said.
He sent an open letter to embassies, international and non-governmental organisations, independent intellectuals and political entities.
Becic said in the letter that instead of within 24 hours, as imperatively required by the Law, DIK made this decision after more than 15 days, carrying out classical legal violence and contravening the Constitution, the laws and the citizens’ will expressed in the elections.
He adds that opposition representatives in the DIK did not dispute that there had been the basis for repeated voting in one polling station where the same legal situation existed as in Petnjica and Ulcinj. However, they were appalled when they saw that DIK members from the ruling parties had to obey a party order and vote for annulling the voting in the four remaining polling stations, for which there was no basis, bearing in mind the legal solutions and previous decisions of the DIK and the Constitutional Court in the same cases. It is precisely because of this, as Becic puts it, legal violence, why four DIK members, including its secretary, have left the session, not wanting to provide legitimacy to a kind of legal violence.
According to him, it is obvious that the dictatorial regime enters the last phase, which is, as a rule, the most brutal one and can be very dangerous.
“Therefore, I call on political actors, representatives of the NGO sector and the international community to respond, because the continued abuse of rights and democracy by DPS can have serious consequences for the society as a whole. Such treatment is definitely an alarm to alert everyone who wants bright future for Montenegro and its citizens,” concluded Becic.
