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The parliamentary elections a week ago gave Montenegro a hitherto unknown situation: After 30 years in power, President Milo Djukanovic’s pro-Western party, DPS, failed to win a majority of the seats together with its partners. Instead, the predominantly pro-Serbian opposition emerged victorious from the elections.
The impending upheaval has now sparked mass protests. Tens of thousands of people gathered in the capital Podgorica and other cities in the country on Sunday night to demonstrate for the preservation of their independent status. “We are fed up with ‘Chetnik freedom’,” said one of the speakers at the rally in Podgorica, according to the dpa news agency. The Chetniks were Serbian militants who committed atrocities against the civilian population during World War II and the Yugoslavian Wars of Disintegration in the 1990s. According to the Reuters news agency, the participants in the demonstration also shouted “This is not Serbia” and “We are not going to surrender to Montenegro.”
In the parliamentary elections, three opposition alliances had won 41 of the 81 seats. They want to form an expert government to break the power of President Djukanovic, who has ruled Montenegro for almost 30 years. They accuse him of corruption, connections to the mafia and attacks on critics of the government. Djukanovic led the small Balkan country to independence from Serbia in 2006 and established it as a partner of the West. At the same time, he obtained a large amount of power.
The most powerful force in the opposition alliance is the pro-Serbian and pro-Russian Democratic Front (DF) with 27 terms. Your two smallest allies have a pro-Western orientation. Due to this balance of power, supporters of Montenegrin independence fear that the country under DF rule may focus more on Serbia and Russia again. According to the Reuters news agency, the DF celebrated its electoral victory with events in which Serbian flags were waved and the three-finger gesture known as the “Serbian salute” was displayed.
Djukanovic said last week that he wanted to accept the victory of the opposition. His party will also fight for a democratic society from within the opposition.
According to the dpa news agency, it was unclear who organized the rallies on Sunday. Most of the speakers introduced themselves as “patriots” that only one party, the state of Montenegro, knew about. The independent newspaper “Vijesti” identified numerous prominent politicians from the Djukanovic DPS party among the participants.
