Ruling party leads Montenegro vote

PODGORICA, Montenegro – Montenegrins voted Sunday in the first parliamentary elections since the tiny state split from Serbia – a ballot that could prove key to the new country’s aspirations of becoming a member of NATO and the European Union.

Official results are expected today. Independent election monitors, citing what they said was a near-complete vote count, said the prime minister’s party won the most votes.

The Center for Democratic Transition predicted the Coalition for European Montenegro, led by Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, would win 41 seats in Montenegro’s 81-seat Parliament.

Two pro-Serbian blocs together would get 23 seats. The Movement for Change, a think tank that recently registered as a political party to challenge Djukanovic with pledges to fight corruption and improve the economy, would win 11 seats, the monitors forecast. The rest would go to several smaller parties.

The vote is key to Montenegro’s hopes of joining the European Union and NATO, as the new Parliament will be charged with drafting and passing a national constitution for the world’s newest country.

“The citizens of Montenegro have in this election secured Montenegro’s road to Europe,” said the spokesman for the ruling coalition, Predrag Sekulic, as supporters fired guns into the air and launched fireworks in victory celebrations.

But Nebojsa Medojevic, leader of the Movement for Change, said the vote proves Montenegro is not ready to get rid of Djukanovic’s “corrupt and incompetent” regime, which has ruled Montenegro for 17 years – the longest-standing government in Europe.

Montenegro declared independence from Serbia after its citizens voted for the split by a slim margin, marking the final breakup of what once was Yugoslavia. The process began when the federation of six republics disintegrated in violence in the 1990s.