Former member of the State Election Commission, Damir Suljević, believes that laws that require broad political consensus should not be written in party premises, but within the Parliament.
"I think it's good that there are such initiatives from different political parties and that each of them offers different solutions. However, the question is how capable these same parties are of securing the necessary majority tomorrow to pass these solutions," said Suljević.
Lawyer Boris Marić also believes that the proposals of DPS and URE should be discussed within the parent committee, and that they could be a good starting point for entering into negotiations.
"I believe that the centrist parties and the dominant civic parties, which are also dominant in the Montenegrin parliament, could seriously discuss certain modalities and reach a compromise solution, so that we can enter the elections, or rather the general elections in 2027, with a preferential option, meaning with a certain possibility for us, as citizens, to intervene in the electoral lists," said Marić.
Suljević believes that URE's proposal is a more acceptable option for the elections, because in this way, he says, small political parties will not waste unused preferential votes. He also praises affirmative action for Roma, but notes that it is already too late for this election cycle.
"It is too late to discuss them within the parliamentary committee, it is too late to discuss them at the plenary session itself. I believe that there was room for discussion within the committee, for comprehensive electoral reform and within the working group within that committee, in order to come up with solutions that could secure broad political support," Suljević said.
Marić also believes that open lists imply a much bolder step forward and greater intervention in electoral legislation than the offered solutions.
"These are relatively minimal interventions, but they are a step forward in the sense that we, as citizens, can intervene ten times on an electoral list for which a citizen supports out of 81 proposed party candidates. With these proposals, parties retain a good part of their party monopoly when determining parliamentary and council mandates is on the agenda, but in any case we can treat it as a step forward," said Marić.
He also concludes that electoral reform should continue in order to move towards individual candidacies, in accordance with the recommendations of the international community, and that much work remains to be done.
