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Montenegrins Go To The Polls With Djukanovic The Favorite
Alan Crosby April 15, 2018
Voters in Montenegro are heading to the polls with six-time prime minister and onetime president Milo Djukanovic the overwhelming favorite in a presidential election that comes at a crucial moment in the Adriatic nation's history.
The April 15 vote will be key in determining whether Montenegro remains on a Western course headed toward European Union membership or drifts back into Russia's orbit even though relations have soured recently.
Preliminary results are expected later in the evening.
A victory for the charismatic, authoritarian Djukanovic would end a two-year absence from office, a rare gap in almost three decades of high politics in the tiny country of only about 640,000 people.
A recent survey by the Podgorica-based Center for Democratic Transition forecast Djukanovic would take 50.6 percent of the vote, enough to win the first round and the election outright.
That compares with 35.5 percent for former lawmaker Mladen Bojanic, who is supported by most of the country's opposition parties, including pro-Russian groups who want to freeze Montenegro's NATO membership and organize a referendum on the issue if they take power.
None of the other five candidates, including lawmaker Draginja Vuksanovic, the first woman to run for Montenegro's presidency, reached double digits.
"I will strive to continue with the policy of linking countries and of good neighborly relations, and with even more cooperation in European integration, which is underlined by the fact that Montenegro is a regional leader in that process," Djukanovic said during the campaign.
"The responsibility is to help our neighbors and make everyone together faster."
A former communist who rose as part of a group of young politicians to prominence in the late 1980s, Djukanovic became Europe's youngest prime minister in 1991 at the age of 29.
Yugoslavia collapsed the same year, but Djukanovic remained a close ally of rump Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic until beginning to cut his own path in 1998, eventually leading Montenegro into independence from Serbia in 2006.
He has since pushed the country through sometimes painful economic times and toward European integration, highlighted by the 2017 accession into NATO.
But it hasn't always been smooth sailing.
Djukanovic, 56, has been dogged by opposition accusations that he fosters cronyism and corruption.
He came under investigation and was indicted by prosecutors in the Italian city of Bari in 2008 for alleged tobacco smuggling. The probe was later dropped given Djukanovic's diplomatic immunity.
"He cannot be the solution because he is the creator of the instability and chaos that we witness in the streets of Montenegro," Bojanic said while campaigning.
"I agree with Djukanovic that the state is stronger than the mafia. But the problem is that I do not know which side he is on."
On the streets of the capital, Podgorica, posters and billboards stare down at voters much the same way the 1.9-meter-tall Djukanovic towers over most of his rivals.
Sasa Petrovic, a 39-year-old farmer, says Djukanovic's charisma attracts voters because it touches a nerve with the passion they want in a leader.
But that constant gaze still unnerves some who feel that just as it was time for new blood when Djukanovic rose to power, new leadership is now needed in Montenegro.
"I think it's time to make some change. This is not good at all. Great countries change presidents every three to four years, not like this. Not every 30 years!" says Marko Veselinovic, a 44-year-old entrepreneur in Podgorica.
If no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the first round, a runoff will be held between the top two finishers on April 29.
With reporting by RFE/RL's Balkan Service
Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
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