Montenegro Election Campaign Gathers Pace
By Milena Milosevic
Most big parties completed their lists of candidates for parliament on Monday, marking the moment when the campaign kicked off, ahead of the October 14 vote.
The ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS, will submit on Wednesday its list of potential candidates for parliament ahead of the October 14 general election.
The list is headed by country’s longtime leader, the party leader, Milo Djukanovic. Igor Luksic, the Prime Minister, is in second place, followed by Svetozar Marovic, the former president of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro.
Miomir Mugosa, mayor of the capital, Podgorica, is on the list in the fifteenth place.
The DPS is running in the election with two allies, the Social Democrat Party, SDP, and the small Liberal Party, LP.
The Democratic Front, DF, an opposition political force formed in early July, also presented its list on Monday.
Its first candidate is Miodrag Lekic, the front’s leader and Montenegro’s foreign minister from 1992 to 1995.
The Socialist People’s Party, SNP, the biggest opposition party, completed its list slightly earlier, on Sunday, but also only days before the Thursday deadline expired for the submission of electoral lists to the State Electoral Commission, DIK.
Some of its leaders previously joined the Democratic Front, and have since been subsequently dismissed from the party.
Once the parties’ candidates are approved by the DIK, they have the right to start their election campaigns in the media.
The recently formed Positive Montenegro was first off the mark, having submitted its list of candidates on September 4.
Montenegro’s main anti-corruption NGO, the Network for Affirmation of Non-Governmental Sector, MANS, on Monday said it would be monitoring and reporting any abuses of state resources in the campaign.
