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Montenegro Votes for Independence, CESID and CEMI Report

Ivana Stevanovic

22 May 2006

According to last estimates made by CESID (Centre for Democracy and Free Elections) 55.3 percent of citizens of Montenegro voted for independent Montenegro at the referendum held yesterday.

Independence supporters celebrate on the streets of Podgorica

At 23:40 hours, Zoran Lucic, CESID Executive Director, reported the projected final results of the Referendum, based on the exit data collected at 300 ballot stations. In previous elections, CESID's margin of mistake when basing projection on stratified sample never exceeded 0.4 percent. According to Lucic, there is zero probability for the result to fall below the necessary 55 percent census.

The Podgorica-based Centre for Monitoring CEMI reported that the independence bloc received 55.5 percent of the voters, on the basis of 100 percent of ballot stations.

The same figure was presented later last night by Milo Djukanovic, the Prime Minister of Montenegro. He congratulated the citizens of Montenegro their independent state and expressed his conviction that the country will accellerate its progress in the European Integrations.

Inviting the supporters of independence to a celebration, Djikanovic sent a message that the celebrations should not be held in an atmosphere in which anybody would "� feel humiliated or as a loser". Djukanovic added that there will be no losers in the state of Montenegro.

The preliminary data presented by the State Referendum Commission, released earlier today, confirmed that the majority of the citizens of Montenegro voted for independence. According to the data, 55.4 percent of the citizens voted for independence, while 44.6 percent were against.

Frantisek Lipka, the President of the Commission, said that these were only preliminary results, having in mind that the materials from 45 ballot stations with some 25,000 registered voters have not arrived yet. Lipka said that this might lead to "certain moves in the results", but that the fluctuation can't be of great consequence, having in mind that it refered to about five percent of the electorate.