The new president of Montenegro is 36 years old, an economist and a novice in politics. The success of Jakov Milatovica candidate with the aim of bringing fresh air to the small and unstable Balkan country, took the outgoing president out of the game Milo Djukanovic, 61, a veteran of Montenegrin politics which he dominated for over thirty years both as president (two terms) and as head of government (seven times). A turning point that comes when the first data assign percentages of around 60% to Milatovic while waiting for the electoral commission to release the final and official data. Milatovic was supported by all the other five candidates in contention in the first round of the presidential elections on 19 March, lined up en bloc against Djukanovic.
The end of the Djukanovic era didn’t come suddenly. His Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) had been defeated in the last elections in August 2020, ending up in opposition for the first time in the last thirty years. So Djukanovic, considered the ‘master father‘ of Montenegro, has lost its leading role for better or for worse in all the main events that have marked the recent history of the small former Yugoslav country.
In Friday evening’s television duel at the end of the electoral campaign, Milatovic had not hesitated to define Milo Djukanovic as an autocrat, ‘the last European dictator’, accusing him of having contributed to the spread of corruption and crime. And ‘retire Djukanovic’ had been his watchword. Now, with the economist at the helm of the country, a new page is opening for Montenegro, with Milatovic determined to embody the face of the cachange and the future of the Balkan country, independent since 2006, member of NATO since 2017 and engaged for a decade in the negotiations for accession to the European Union. The latter process has also suffered a sudden slowdown in the last two years, with the emergence of strong political instability, weak governments and parliamentary upheavals.
With Milatovic in the presidency we can also expect an improvement in the relations between Montenegro and Serbia, given his much softer stance towards Belgrade, which Djukanovic instead accuses of pursuing a ‘hegemonic’ policy in the region and of interference in neighboring countries in defense of Serbian minorities. This is a very sensitive issue for Montenegro, where about a third of the population is ethnic Serb. In the evening in the capital Podgorica and in many other places in the country, celebrations were underway for Milatovic’s victory, with carousels, music and waving of flags.