Preliminary results/ Pro-European parties win the largest number of votes in Montenegro

2023-06-12 07:32:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Preliminary results/ Pro-European parties win the largest number of votes in

Preliminary results of Sunday's parliamentary elections in Montenegro show that Europe Now came first with 26 percent of the vote or 24 seats, but not enough to form a single government. It is followed by the coalition headed by the Democratic Party of Socialists of former president Milo Djukanovi? with 23.7 percent or 21 mandates in the Parliament of Montenegro.

The pro-Serbian and pro-Russian coalition "For the Future of Montenegro" (former Democratic Front) has won 15 percent of the votes or 13 mandates and the URA coalition of Dritan Abazovi? with the Democrats of Aleksa Be?i? 12.3 percent or 11 mandates.

The Bosnian Party, as the largest minority party in Montenegro won 6.8 percent of the votes or 6 mandates, while the Albanian Forum with 2 mandates, the Albanian Alliance and the Croatian Civic Initiative with 1 mandate each will enter the parliament.

According to the data of the Center for Democratic Transition, the participation in the elections was 56.4 percent or 305,760 citizens. This is significantly less than in the parliamentary elections of 2020, when 76.6 percent voted, as well as in 2016, when the participation was 73.3 percent.

Preliminary results show that more votes have been won by pro-democratic and pro-European parties such as the "Europe Now" Movement, which was formed in the middle of last year and to which the newly elected president of Montenegro, Jakov Milatovic, also belongs. the URA coalition with the Democrats and the minority parties who in the post-election coalition can form the majority in the Parliament of Montenegro.

A major change occurred in the coalition of the pro-Serbian and pro-Russian Democratic Front, which formed the current parliamentary majority in the last elections. This political coalition has already been divided into three independent parties and in these elections it marked a significant decline.

81 MPs emerge from these elections, and the new parliamentary majority will elect the Prime Minister and the new government of Montenegro.

Over the past few years, the unstable parliamentary majority replaced two governments, which plunged Montenegro into an institutional crisis and further deepened divisions on the political scene.

For this reason, the international factor has continuously expressed concern about the prolonged political crisis in the country, the blocking of institutions, the increasing polarization of society and the inability of the authorities to find a way out of the crisis.

Montenegro joined NATO in 2017 after a failed coup attempt a year earlier, which Podgorica blamed on Russian agents and Serbian ultranationalists.

Following the launch of Russian aggression in Ukraine last year, Montenegro has joined EU sanctions against Russia. The Kremlin, in return, placed Montenegro on the list of unfriendly states./ Voa