The Croatian Civil Initiative (HGI) will support the incumbent Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic in the presidential election scheduled for 19 March, the political party of the Croatian minority in Montenegro announced.

The HGI called on voters and sympathisers to vote for Djukanovic so that Montenegro can continue along the pro-Western path.

“Since its establishment in 2002, the HGI has been fighting, without calculation, for the independent Montenegro, a member of NATO and the European Union. Djukanovic has successfully led all the processes that positioned Montenegro within the circle of Western civilisation, which are the HGI’s goals too. We have seen that both society and government have regressed since the last parliamentary election and Montenegro’s EU membership prospects are seriously jeopardised,” the party said in a statement.

In addition to Djukanovic, the candidate of the Democratic Party of Socialists, the presidential election will be contested by the leader of New Serbian Democracy, Andrija Mandic, the deputy leader of the Europe Now! movement, Aleksa Becic, Social Democratic Party member of Parliament Draginja Vuksanovic Stankovic, the leader of United Montenegro, Goran Danilovic, and influencer Jovan Radulovic.

A total of 542,154 people are eligible to vote. If none of the candidates wins more than half of the votes on 18 March, a second round of voting will take place on 2 April.