The Center for Democratic Transition is a nongovernmental organization established in August 2000 with a goal to positively influence and further improve the beginning of transition processes in Montenegro. This organization gathers mainly young people who try to promote norms and standards accepted in developed democracies.

The undemocratic atmosphere of elections required the necessary involvement of the civil sector in the election process as well as in order to demystify the process. For the above-mentioned reasons, as well as due to the specific political situation, we decided that in its work CDT should pay special attention to election monitoring. Moreover, we support not only the application of the legal and democratic infrastructure in order to have fair and honest elections but also the further improvement of human rights, rights of the national minorities, transparency of the processes of the privatization and involvement of a vast number of citizens in establishing their full political and civic rights.

CDT conducted its first civic election monitoring project in September 2000, monitoring the regularity of the Federal Elections. Since then, CDT has conducted seven civic election monitoring campaigns:

 Parliamentary elections in Serbia in 2000;

 Extraordinary parliamentary elections in Montenegro in April 2001;

 Elections for displaced persons from Kosovo on the territory of Montenegro in November 2001;

 Local elections in Montenegro in May and October 2002;

 Parliamentary elections in Montenegro in October 2002; and

 Monitoring of three presidential elections in December 2002 and February and May 2003;

 Monitoring of extraordinary local elections in five Montenegrin municipalities during the 2004 and 2005.

The staff of the CDT headquarters in Podgorica coordinated CDT activities for monitoring of the election processes, while the operational activities were performed by six regional and 30 municipal coordinators and more than 1,000 trained volunteers.

PVT (Parallel Vote Tabulation) is a statistical method based on a random representative sample that CDT used for projecting voter turnout and the final election results. We achieved the greatest success (with the margin error of 0,5%) in the parliamentary elections in October 2002, when we projected the election results only 55 minutes after closing of polling stations. We also announced precise election results during the presidential elections.

All of our observations and analyses were announced publicly and their results were distributed to the relevant domestic and foreign institutions and representatives.

In cooperation with the National Democratic Institute (NDI) from Washington, CDT has also monitored general elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina in April 2000. In June 2002, a CDT representative was in Macedonia sharing CDT’s experiences with the newly established Macedonian organization MOST. We also conducted the training on topic “Strengthening the network capacities” for members of this NGO, together with colleagues from GONG (Croatia) in February 2005. As a member of the OSCE monitoring mission, a CDT representative served as a short-term observer in the presidential elections in Byelorussia in 2002, as well as a long-term observer in the parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan in 2003. As a member of ENEMO, CDT monitored the presidential elections in Ukraine with four LTOs, and 10 STOs, and elections in Kyrgyzstan.

In the period from March to May 2003, through the network of Montenegrin NGO called Akcija (Action), CDT conducted the campaign “Farewell to Arms” in cooperation with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Montenegro. On the territory of Montenegro, in cooperation with the police, our volunteers collected 34,233 units of unregistered firearms and munitions, handed over voluntarily by 1,200 citizens. The amount of firearms handed over voluntarily in this two-month campaign is equal to the amount that police managed to confiscate by force in the period of three or four years.

In the period from July to December 2001, we also realized the first part of the project “Open Parliament,” which encourages citizens’ involvement and visits of educative character to the Montenegrin Parliament and meetings with elected MPs. In October 2003, we started with the realization of the second phase of the project, and the visits of citizens to the Parliament we are organizing once or twice in a month, depending on parliamentary schedule.

The Center for Democratic Transition (CDT) – with the support of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) – conducted an Internship Pilot Project in the Montenegrin Parliament between 15 July and 15 September. The Internship Program is a program of additional student education, which means that, apart from the knowledge they get in the faculty, students also acquire some practical experience as temporary, part-time employees in state institutions. We launched the Internship Program in October 2003, and, in the Montenegrin Parliament at the moment, we have the third generation of interns made up of 10 students from the Economics, Law and Electro-technical faculties. CDT is also a member of informal international network of NGOs called ENEMO, as well as the Montenegrin network NGO Akcija.