CEMI: Valid Referendum

25 May 2006

The media campaign for the Montenegro Referendum was conducted correctly, but in the field work of the activists a number of inadequate actions were registered that could qualify as pressure on the voters, states the CEMI Centre for Monitoring in its Final Report on the Monitoring of Referendum Process. The Report provides a global evaluation of the overall referendum campaign, the work of the referendum bodies, as well as the conduct of the actual ballot day and the atmosphere after the results were announced.

"Politicians' speeches were mostly negative in connotation, but were predominantly directed against the political opponents and not the citizens. CEMI believes that, in the latest stages of the campaign, the representatives of the two blocs invested additional efforts to prevent the dissemination of religious and national hatred and intolerance", states the Report.

CEMI points out that the pressure on the citizens to vote one way or the other was great. CEMI observers noted a great number of activists of both blocs in the field, who didn't save effort to win over as many citizens as possible, by legal and less than legal means available.

"We could say that the referendum passed under considerable tension and in an atmosphere of fight for every vote. However, the situation never escalated to the level sufficient to jeopardize the validity of the referendum process", concludes CEMI. (The full text of the Report is available here.)

In another report released earlier, the Independent Association of Journalists of Vojvodina-NDNV finds that the reporting of the Serbian media regarding the Montenegro referendum biased and unprofessional.

"Serbian media demonstrated low level of professionalism and took the side of the bloc for preservation of state union", said NDNV in a public release.

NDNV estimates that the Serbian media, with honorable exceptions, again demonstrated their dependence on the holders of polical power and they haven't succeeded in distancing themselves from the "grand" national-paternalistic politics and ideology that has been defeated so many times and yet remains vital and incredibly influential.

"We hope that the results of the Referendum will provoke Serbia and its media to take a good, long look into the mirror and start seeking answers to the key questions of our past, present and future. One such question would be, how come all other republics of former Yugoslavia seceded and we still claim that we are right? We also hope that this will stop the long tendency to produce enemies, necessary to cover our own emptyness and lack of capacity to face the challenges of the present time", concludes NDNV.