Polling stations opened on Sunday in Montenegro where around 550,000 voters will elect a new government in urgent parliamentary elections, and the elections could show whether the country will overcome deep political divisions and disagreements that have slowed down its EU membership journey.

The elections are taking place because the previous ruling coalition could not agree on the mandate of the new government, after the current government of Prime Minister Dritan Abazović was given a vote of no-confidence in August 2022.

A total of 15 parties and coalitions are participating in the elections.

“A poll by the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM) last month placed the pro-European Movement Europe Now (PES) party, which also favours closer ties with Serbia, in the lead with 29.1% ahead of the parliamentary election,” Reuters reported recently.

The PES’s Jakov Milatovic won the April presidential vote. The party’s leader, Milojko Spajić, is seen as the favourite for the new prime minister.

Milatović and Spajić founded the populist platform Europe Now in February 2022 proposing the reduction of health contributions to increase the minimum pay from €220 to €450. Later they formed the political movement Europe Now, which supports Montenegro’s European integration.

The DPS will run in the snap elections independently without its previous partners Social-Democrats, the Liberal Party and the Democratic Union of Albanians, and also Đukanović is no longer at the party’s helm. It seems according to some opinion polls that the DPS can count on the support of the 20% of the electorate.

The URA party of the current caretaker Prime Minister Dritan Abazović which makes coalition with Aleksa Bačić’s Democratic Montenegro party is expected to win between 10-15% of ballots.

The pro-Russian and pro-Serbian coalition of three parties ceased to exist recently and Nebojša Medojević’s Movement for Changes from this bloc will participate in the elections on its own.

The other two parties — the New Serb Democracy, led by Andrija Mandić, and the Democratic People’s Party, led by Milan Knežević, will together run in the elections, and they currently enjoy the support of 10-15% of voters.

Political parties representing ethnic minorities mainly submitted individual lists.

Two political parties representing ethnic Albanians are expected to win one seat each. The ethnic Bosniaks’ representatives are set to win two seats.

The Croatian Civic Initiative’s slate is believed to stand a chance of passing the preferential election threshold of 0.3%

Approximately, 550,000 Montenegrin citizens are eligible to vote and several hundred local and international observers will monitor the voting on Sunday.

The Montenegrin Parliament has 81 seats.

The extraordinary parliamentary elections are monitored by several hundred local observers from the non-governmental organizations of the Center for Monitoring (CEMI) and the Center for Democratic Transition (CDT) and the international mission of the OSCE.

Polling stations are open until 8 p.m., and the first results are announced half an hour later.