He was considered the longest ruling leader in Europe along with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. Alternately Prime Minister and President of Montenegro since 1991, Milo Djukanovic, 61, suffered a historic defeat on Sunday April 2 in the presidential elections organized in this small Balkan country known for its mafia penetration. According to the counts of electoral NGOs, he obtained only 40% of the votes.
In his place was elected a young 36-year-old economist, Jakov Milatovic, who promised to bring this country, a candidate for membership since 2010, into the European Union as quickly as possible. “Tonight is the night we’ve been waiting for for thirty years. We said goodbye to crime and corruption”, proclaimed this former analyst of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in front of his supporters. Before the election, this co-leader of the party Europe now! had explained to World “wanting to be the first truly pro-European president” of Montenegro by being “an emancipator who will move the values of this country towards Europe and the West”.
His election de facto marks the end of the uninterrupted power of the sulphurous Mr. Djukanovic at the head of Montenegro. Dominating the local political scene since the 1990s, when this country of 600,000 inhabitants was still part of Yugoslavia, this former socialist had transformed into a fervent nationalist in the 2000s by leading his country towards independence from Serbia, obtained in 2006. The smallest state in the Balkans, Montenegro then transformed under his leadership into the main platform for the formidable Balkan mafias, active in particular in the trafficking of drugs and cigarettes.
“Mafiocratic Regime”
A brutal reminder of these excesses, the electoral campaign was notably marked by the arrest a few days before the second round of the number 2 of the national police and several of his subordinates, accused of having beaten up Montenegrin citizens on behalf of one of the local clans. The national police chief was subsequently sacked by the government. “Until now we had a mafiocratic regime, but with the help of Europe things are changing”promises Mr. Milatovic, who relies on the fact that the proof of these beatings was obtained thanks to the infiltration of the Sky-ECC encrypted messaging system by the French, Belgian and Dutch police.
The presidential function remains above all symbolic, but the defeat of Mr. Djukanovic marks the culmination of a process begun in 2020 with the first failure of his Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) in the legislative elections, followed in the fall of 2022 by the loss of the town hall of Podgorica, the capital. Created in June 2022, the Europe Now! has, for his part, chained electoral victories on the basis of a centrist and very pro-business program.
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