Marković Cabinet

Elections for the composition of new parliament of Montenegro were held on October 16, 2016 and resulted in a new victory for the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) led by long-term PM Milo Đukanović, which has been in power since introduction of multi-party system in 1990.

Although the DPS failed to win the majority on its own,[1] they succeeded in remaining in power once again, forming a government with the newly formed Social Democrats (SD) and national minorities parties.

On 9 November 2016, Deputy PM Duško Marković was nominated as Prime Minister by the president of Montenegro Filip Vujanović, and on 28 November new government was elected by 41 out of 81 members of the parliament (with the entire opposition boycotting the assembly), with the support of DPS, SD and the Albanian, Croat and Bosniak minority parties.[2]

All 39 opposition MPs (out of 81 in total) started boycotting Parliament since the constitution of its current convocation in December 2016, due to claims of electoral fraud and that the elections were not held under fair conditions, at the 2016 parliamentary elections. They are demanding snap elections and reform of electoral laws.

In mid-January 2019, a video clip from 2016 surfaced in which businessman Duško Knežević, chairman of the Montenegro-based Atlas Group, appeared to hand the Mayor of Podgorica and high-ranked ruling party member, Slavoljub Stijepović, an envelope containing what Knežević later said was $97,000, to fund a Democratic Party of Socialists parliamentary election campaign.[4]

Protests against corruption within Montenegrin DPS-lead government have started in February 2019 soon after the revelation of footage and documents that appear to implicate top officials in obtaining suspicious funds for the ruling party.

As of late December 2019, the newly proclaimed religion law which de-jure transfers the ownership of church buildings and estates from the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro to the Montenegrin state, sparked a series of massive protests followed with road blockages, which continued to 2020.