Voting finished, counting begins

The Europe Now movement (PES) won the most votes in yesterday's extraordinary parliamentary elections in Montenegro, which were characterized by extremely low turnout.

That party will most likely be in a position to be the bearer of forming a government, for which it will have to form a coalition.

PES won 26 percent of the vote, according to preliminary data Center for Democratic Transition (CDT), based on 100 percent of the processed sample.

A party formed less than a year ago Milojko Spajić, for whom this was the first participation in the fight for seats in the parliament, in the new convocation of the Assembly, according to the projection of CDT and CeMi, there will be 24 deputies. It is, however, a coalition list, in which several seats belong to CIVIS, United Montenegro, Novska Lista, Alternativa...

Spajić announced last night that they will talk to everyone with whom, as he explained, they share common values.

When asked with whom they would form the government, Spajić said that he had clearly declared with whom he would not form a coalition - with Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) and The URA civil movement while he did not answer the question about a possible coalition with the paper "For the Future of Montenegro"

According to CDT data, the Zajedno coalition, gathered around the DPS, won the largest number of mandates, after the PES coalition. As announced by the CDT, they will have 21 mandates. They won 23 percent of the vote.

The coalition follows For the future of Montenegro with 14 mandates (15,1 percent), the coalition of Democrats and the Civic Movement URA 12 (12,3 percent). According to CeMI data, those coalitions have 13 and 11 mandates, respectively.

The Bosniak party will have six mandates, the Albanian Forum two representatives in the parliament, and the Albanian Alliance and the Croatian Civic Initiative one each, according to CDT data.

SDP and SNP on the brink of the census

According to information from the CDT, the Social Democratic Party, the coalition of the Socialist People's Party and Demos, the Justice for All Movement, the People's Coalition, Upturn, the Movement for Changes and the Citizens' Movement "Mi momoje" remained below the census.

The People's Movement (NP) "Pravda za sve" achieved parliamentary status, Vladimir Leposavić, the holder of that electoral list, said last night.

At the press conference, he said that it was important that the election day passed without major irregularities.

The CeMI projection showed that the SNP and Demos have 3,2 percent of the vote, that is, two MPs.

Data from the Center for Monitoring and Research (CeMI), based on 100 percent of the processed sample, show that PES won 25,6 percent of the votes, the coalition DPS-SD-LP-DUA won 23,2 percent, ZBCG (NSD-DNP) 14,7 ,12,5, "Hrabro se broji" coalition (Democrats-URA) XNUMX percent...

According to these data, the Bosniak Party has 7,1 percent, the Socialist People's Party (SNP) and Demos 3,1 percent.

Below the census are Pravda za sve with 2,9 percent and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) with 2,8 percent.

The Albanian Forum has 1,9 percent, the Albanian Alliance 1,5 percent, Reversal 1,4 percent, and the People's Coalition (DHP, Prava, Slobodna) 1,1 percent.

The Movement for Change is at 0,7 percent, the Croatian Civic Initiative at 0,7, and We Can at 0,5 percent.

With yesterday's result, PES continued its successes in the local and presidential elections, after they took over power in Podgorica after the October local elections, and recently triumphed in the race for the head of state. However, they did not achieve the optimistic forecasts that they would have over 30 percent of support, and methodologist Miloš Bešić explained last night that this is understandable because in the presidential elections the PES candidate was also supported by the voters of KZBCG, GP URA, Democrats...

DPS "stronger than steel"

After personnel changes at the top of the party and on the electoral list, DPS achieved a better result - better than was estimated during the election campaign, but worse than in 2020.

Back then, the parties that now make up that coalition had 33 MPs, and now they have 21.

In doing so, they continued the trend of declining support that began in the previous parliamentary elections, in which the party lost three decades of power.

The holder of the "Together" list, acting president of the DPS, Danijel Živković, said at the headquarters of that coalition that, after the elections, that party is the strongest political entity in Montenegro.

"After counting all the votes, DPS has 18 mandates, PES 17, which confirms the fact and circumstance that DPS is stronger than steel," he said.

Živković said that this coalition has confirmed its political relevance and that without this coalition there is no stable, reformist government.

"We who started the European journey will introduce the country to the EU... The prime minister can be from this coalition," he said.

He said that DPS won 24 percent of the votes, out of 99 percent of the votes counted.

The coalition "For the Future of Montenegro" (ZBCG), consisting of the New Serbian Democracy (Nova), the Democratic People's Party (DNP) and the Workers' Party (RP), which won 14 mandates according to the CDT projection, continues to see a smaller drop in support. while according to CEMI's projection, they have 13 MPs. The parliamentary club of that alliance in the Parliament of Montenegro has 15 deputies, and they participated in the 2020 elections in a broad alliance that won 27 mandates at the time.

The holder of the list "For the future of Montenegro" Milan Knežević said that without them there is no "stable, democratic government".

"We are ready for talks with all the constituents of the XNUMXth August majority who are now in the parliament. We call on them not to make separate moves and not to negotiate in some of their modalities, which would lead to instability," he said.

Knežević expects, as he said, that PES will invite them to talks "or that we will invite them". "They don't have a majority now. We think we also have some principles and we want to agree based on them. Just as PES has its principles, so we have ours. No one has a monopoly on forming a government without serious compromises," he said.

Abazović: We will be the backbone of the government

The Democrats and GP URA, who participated in these elections in the "Hrabro se Broji" coalition, won 12 mandates according to CDT's projection and 11 according to CEMI. In the 2020 elections, GP URA together with CIVIS and the Justice and Reconciliation Party (SPP) won four mandates (5,54 percent), while the Democrats with Demos won 12,53 percent, i.e. 10 mandates.

Prime Minister Dritan Abazović and others on the "Courage Counts" list said that they will be the "main backbone of the government."

The holder of the list, Aleksa Bečić, added that they have to talk because no one has 41 MPs.

"No one can do it alone, we have to make compromises and come to an agreement", adding that he will be able to elaborate on this only in the coming days.

The Movement for Change (PzP), which formed the Democratic Front (DF) with Nova and DNP from 2012 until recently and was part of the ZBCG 2020 coalition, remained below the census. In 2006, that party emerged from the NGO Group for Changes, and in the first elections after the restoration of state independence (held in September of that year), it made a big surprise by winning 11 mandates, thus becoming the third force in the parliament. In the last convocation of the Assembly, PzP had five deputies.

The Bosniak Party (BS) had three mandates so far, now they have six. The president of that party, Ervin Ibrahimović, said last night that they achieved the best result since their establishment.

BS more than 2020, support halved for many

According to preliminary projections of turnout and percentages won, without taking into account the percentage of invalid ballots, the Europe Now Movement won about 77 votes in yesterday's elections.

PES did not exist in 2020, but PES candidate Jakov Milatović won almost 98 votes in the first round of the presidential elections, while Goran Danilović, the leader of the United Party that ran with PES in the parliamentary elections, won 4.600 votes. This means that PES now had about 25 thousand votes.

The "Together" coalition consisting of DPS, SD, LP and DUA won around 68 votes. DPS presidential candidate Milo Đukanović, who was supported by the other parties from the coalition, as well as the Bosniak Party, won almost 120 votes in the first round of the presidential elections in March.

The parties that make up that coalition won as many as 2020 votes in 160.

The coalition "For the future of Montenegro" won about 45 thousand votes, while their candidate in the presidential elections, Andrija Mandić, had over 65 thousand votes in the first round. He was then supported by the SNP, which now won around 8.300 votes, and part of the coalition was also the Movement for Change, which won over two thousand votes, and was also supported by part of the current "People's Coalition", which had over three thousand votes.

In 2020, that coalition had over 130 votes.

According to projections, the Democrats and URA won around 39 votes, which is more than Aleksa Bečić won in the first round of the presidential elections, when he won 37.500 votes.

Those two parties won 2020 thousand votes in separate appearances in 73, then in coalitions with Demos and CIVIS.

The Bosniak Party is the only party that managed to win more votes than in 2020, when the turnout was twenty percent higher, and it won over 20 thousand votes, which is four thousand more than almost three years ago.

The Social Democratic Party won around 8.500 votes, which is two thousand votes less than their presidential candidate Draginja Vuksanović-Stanković won in the first round, and four thousand less than they won in 2020.

Six parties lost their parliamentary status

According to CeMI's projection based on 99,5 percent of the processed electorate and the distribution on the coalition electoral lists, DPS lost more than a third of deputies, SNP will have three, and DNP and the Democrats will each have one less deputy. Bosniak parties doubled the number of their seats, while URA will have one more MP. Six parties lost their parliamentary status.

According to CEMI's projections, the previously non-parliamentary parties and civic lists from the coalition around Europe now won 22 out of a total of 24 mandates won, while the remaining two mandates went to United and Civis, which had as many in 2020, when they were in coalitions For the Future of Montenegro and Black on White.

The parties that make up the Zajedno coalition lost a total of 12 mandates, of which DPS lost 11.

In the previous convocation of the parliament, it had 28 deputies, and now it has 17. The SD kept its three mandates from the previous convocation, while the LP candidate did not enter the won number of 21 parliamentary seats, according to CEMI's projection. DUA, which was in another coalition in 2020, kept its one MP.

The coalition of Nova, DNP and RP lost two seats, according to CEMI's projection - in the previous convocation they had 15 deputies, and now CEMI projects 13. NSD kept its 9 mandates, and Milan Knežević's DNP lost one mandate (previously 5 and now 4), while the candidate of the Workers' Party is below the line of 13 seats projected for this coalition by CEMI.

SNP lost three mandates, because until now it had 5 deputies and now, according to CEMI's projections, it will have 2, while DEMOS, according to the schedule on this coalition list, lost its mandate from the previous convocation, which it won in 2020 in the coalition with the Democrats.

According to the list of Democrats and URA and CEMI's projection of 11 mandates won, Aleksa Bečić's party has one less mandate compared to the previous convocation (previously 9 and now 8), while URA remained at 3.

The Bosnian party doubled its number of deputies from 3 to 6. The Albanian Forum won two mandates, and so far has not had its representative, while the Albanian Alliance will have one deputy, namely Genci Nimanbegu, who entered parliament in 2020 as a partner of the Nika party. Đeljošaj, who now heads the Albanian Forum.

HGI had no MPs in the previous convocation and yesterday, according to CEMI's projections, it won one seat in the new parliament. CEMI projects that the Movement for Change, SDP and Prava Montenegro did not enter the parliament, because they lost 5, 2 and XNUMX MP respectively.