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Parliamentary election starts in Montenegro

Xinhua, October 16, 2016 Adjust font size:

Montenegro's parliamentary election kicked off Sunday to form the new government and decide the future of the country's memberships in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU).

The election runs from 7:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) to 8:00 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Sunday. People will choose their representatives among 17 candidate parties and coalitions.

Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, leader of the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro (DPS) which currently has 31 out of 81 seats, will fight for his seventh mandate at the helm of the government since 1991 with an aim to make progress on the path to European integration and membership in the NATO.

The main opposition coalition the Democratic Front (DF), which has 17 members of parliament (MPs) so far, built a campaign trying to topple Djukanovic's government and organize a referendum on the EU and NATO memberships.

Other participants include the Key Coalition that currently has 13 MPs, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) with six MPs as well as Alternative Montenegro, Positive Montenegro, Democrats, and a number of minority parties of Serbs, Albanians, Bosniaks and Croats in Montenegro.

The threshold to enter the 81-seat parliament is three percent of total votes for regular parties or 0.7 percent for minority parties.

According to the State Electoral Commission, more than 500,000 people are eligible to vote in the election.

The regular parliamentary election in Montenegro, the tenth in history since the introduction of a multi-party system and the fourth since it gained independence from Serbia in 2006, was announced on July 11 by Montenegrin President Filip Vujanovic.

In the previous election held on Oct. 14, 2012, a coalition of the DPS, the SDP and the Liberal Party won 39 out of 81 seats, and managed to form the government together with minority parties.

However, the government lost the majority in the parliament at the beginning of this year when the SDP left it for different political views, which forced the DPS to form a transitional government in May together with a part of the opposition parties in order to organize a fair and free election. Endi