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Turnout in Montenegro’s parliamentary elections was significantly higher than expected, with 54.1 percent of those eligible to vote casting their vote at 1 p.m.
Turnout in elections four years ago was 13.7 percent at 1 p.m., and in 2012 it was 18.2 percent.
Just over 540,000 citizens with voting rights will decide between 7 am and 8 pm who will enter the 81-member parliament.
Eleven parties and coalitions stood for parliamentary elections. The dominant pro-Western socialists are expected to be able to re-form a government, but for the first time in thirty years, the struggle may be very close. Milo djukanovic led party and friendly Serbian opposition.
The biggest controversy during the campaign was generated by the Ecclesiastical Law approved last December. According to this, religious communities must document what property they owned before 1918, that is, before Montenegro joined the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. According to the Serbian Orthodox Church, they could lose significant real estate, including medieval churches and monasteries. This is how the pro-Western Montenegrin government wants to push the Serbian church into the background, they believe. According to the government, this is out of the question, although the country’s leaders have repeatedly criticized the church, saying that it is not in the interests of Montenegro but in the interests of Serbia. For months after the law was passed, thousands of people protested in the streets of Montenegro in protest against the coronavirus epidemic and the consequent ban on meetings and outings.
About a third of the population of the 620,000 Adriatic countries declared themselves Serbs in the last census, and two-thirds of the population are Orthodox Serbs, so it is not surprising that the new legislation has outraged them, just as it is surprising that a country with conservative principles the political power that has ruled for three decades could shake due to a religious issue. (MTI)
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