June 11 () –
The Europe Now party, centrist and pro-Serbian, but favorable to joining the EU, has been the most voted in the early elections held this Sunday in Montenegro with 25.5 percent of votes, once 70 percent of the votes were counted. suffrages.
The opposition coalition Together led by the historic Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro (DPS, for its acronym in Serbo-Croat) would be the second option with 23.5 percent of the vote, according to data released by the NGO Center for Monitoring and Research, CEMI.
Third place goes to For the Future of Montenegro, the electoral proposal of the pro-Russian and pro-Serbian Democratic Front party with 15.1 percent, while the United Reform Action (URA)/Democrats of Montenegro coalition has achieved 12.3 percent. percent of the votes.
The Bosniak Party of Montenegro’s Bosniak minority gets 8.6 percent of the vote and the Social Democratic Party of Montenegro stays at 3.3 percent. Albanian Forum achieves 2.2 percent support. CEMI has reported that participation has been 56.4 percent and that no major irregularities have been detected.
Europa Now has ruled out agreeing with Juntos, but the affinity it could have with the other formations with a view to forming a government is not clear either.
The historic Milo Djukanovic of the DPS has ruled Montenegro from 1991 until his defeat in the second round of the presidential elections on April 2. After this defeat he has left the first political line.
These elections continue the turnaround that began in 2020, when Djukanovic’s DPS lost power for the first time since 1991, amid allegations of corruption and links to organized crime. The country, however, is still in full transition: the coalition that took power three years ago ended up collapsing and, two governments later, Montenegro is governed by an executive in office that has been forced to call early elections.
With nearly three-quarters of the electorate supporting Montenegro’s bid to join the 27-nation EU, major parties are promising voters to achieve that goal and also shore up a tourism-dependent economy that suffered one of Europe’s worst recessions for the pandemic.
