Montenegro Leader Faces Fresh Battle in Capital

Still awaiting the final results of the Sunday's presidential election, both the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists party, DPS, and the opposition are hurriedly turning attention to the local election in Podgorica, which could be the most important poll this year.

Veteran leader Milo Djukanovic won 54 per cent of the votes in the presidential election on April 15, easily beating six opposition candidates.

However, preliminary results of the election in Podgorica gave him an advantage of less than 2,000 votes there compared to opposition runners.

Opposition parties in the April 15 vote united around the independent candidate, businessman Mladen Bojanic, who went on to win 33.4 per cent of the votes.

They have already started their campaign for the local election in the capital.

The first opposition coalition agreement between two moderate parties, the URA movement and the Democrats [Demokrate] was agreed on April 2, in the middle of the presidential campaign.

Critics, however, said it showed only formal rather than substantial support for Bojanic as a joint opposition candidate.

Political analyst Samir Kajosevic said the results of the presidential election in Podgorica show that the opposition has little time to find a sustainable model that will annul the difference of fewer than 2,000 votes in a month.

"The difference between Djukanovic and his opponents would probably have been smaller if the opposition parties had engaged their entire party networks in supporting Bojanic, and if they'd worked harder to reduce the number of abstainers," Kajosevic told BIRN on Monday.

In the presidential election, more than a third of the country's 530,000 registered voters did not turn out.

"Due to their poor...