Belgrade (EFE)
The future president was a candidate of the young movement Europe Now! (ES) and defeated current president Milo Djukanovic, who won 39.9% of the vote, in the second electoral round.
The calculations of the non-governmental organization CeMI, broadcast by public television RTCG, are based on about 90% of the vote count.
More than 540,000 citizens with the right to vote were called today to elect president in the small Balkan country, a NATO member since 2017 and a candidate to enter the European Union (EU), for a five-year term.
Milatovic has been in politics since 2020, when he was appointed economy minister in the first government in three decades that Djukanovic’s Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) was not in.
He promotes a moderate discourse and wants to break the polarization between pro-Russians and Europeanists that divides the country.
In addition, he promises economic reforms that improve the standard of living of citizens and bring the country to the European Union and that end the image of an “impoverished Montenegro and with captive institutions” by Djukanovic.
Milo Djukanovic gives way to the new president of Montenegro
Djukanovic, 61, a candidate for the opposition Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), has dominated the Balkan country’s politics for three decades.
With this defeat, Djukanovic loses his last position of power in Montenegro, a small former Yugoslav republic, whose politics he has dominated for three decades, being six times prime minister and twice president.
Milatovic was part as Finance Minister of the coalition that ousted the Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro (DPS) in December 2020, led for decades by Djukanovic.
After the fall of that executive in April 2021, the economist founded the ES, a new party with a pro-European orientation but at the same time close to Serbia.
