The Human Rights Action believes that the number of votes needed to approve the nomination for the election of the President of the Supreme Court is currently 11, and not 13 as announced by the Acting President of the Supreme Court Vesna Vučković. Since the total number of judges in the Court is 17, a two-thirds majority of that number should be 12, i.e. 11 if the General Session decides that Ana Vuković, a judge of that Court who is a candidate in the competition, should not vote.

The Supreme Court of Montenegro scheduled a General Session for tomorrow at 9:00 a.m., where they will interview candidates for the position of President and vote on whom among them they will nominate to the Judicial Council for election. However, it is still unknown how many votes a candidate needs to receive in order to be nominated.

The fact that the Supreme Court failed to amend the Rules of Procedure of its General Session and specify the number of votes needed for the approval of the nomination for the election of the President of that Court is unacceptable.

The Court’s Acting President, Vesna Vučković, announced the amendment on 15 March and it still is unknown why this was never done.

As a result of the above, the rule will tomorrow once again be determined ad-hoc, by voting prior to the General Session of the Supreme Court, as has been done several times in the past. This creates legal uncertainty and does not inspire confidence.

In a statement made to the media, Mrs. Vučković recently announced that a candidate needs to win 13 votes in order to be nominated for election. She arrived at this number illogically, basing the calculation on the total number of 19 judges of the Supreme Court. However, that is how many judges there should be, while currently there are only 17. If Mrs. Vučković’s method were to be applied, it would mean that the votes of the two non-existent judges would be counted as votes that were cast against a candidate, which is absurd. This would essentially prevent a successful election and maintain the status quo!

The Supreme Court had already applied a different system of counting votes, in 2021, when it nominated judge Miraš Radović for President. On that occasion, the General Session had taken into account two thirds of 14 judges, which is how many the Supreme Court had at the time, which was/is the only logical interpretation of the words “the total number of judges”, meaning the existing judges, excluding the “phantom” ones.

Another unresolved issue is whether a candidate judge should be allowed to vote for him/herself or not, and this rule had been applied differently. This issue is especially important now, when one candidate (Ana Vuković) is a judge of the Supreme Court, while her opponent (Miodrag Pešić) is not. If she is allowed to vote for herself and Pešić is not, they will be placed in unequal positions.

We appeal to the Supreme Court to take a responsible approach to establishing a fair rule on voting and the number of required votes. We reiterate that the decision to approve a candidate for the election of the President of the Supreme Court is of key importance not only for the this Court and the judiciary, but also for the progress of the entire country of Montenegro towards membership in the European Union.