Montenegro: The Dilemmas of a Small Republic

For the small Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, the early parliamentary elections held on 20 October 2002 were another in a series of "critical" votes since the advent of multiparty competition in 1990. As in the April 2001 voting, the pro-Western governing coalition of Milo Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) turned back a challenge from nationalists and supporters of a strong federal union with Serbia whose ranks included former close allies of one-time Serbian strongman (and now accused war criminal) Slobodan Milosevic. If anything, the most recent elections returned a more decisive verdict, boosting the DPS-SDP from 36 to 39 seats in the 77-member parliament and allowing the coalition's two parties to form a new government on their own.