Vujanovic wins Montenegro election

Filip Vujanovic won Montenegro’s first presidential elections since it split from Serbia two years ago, according to an independent vote monitoring group.

Mr Vujanovic won 51.4% of the vote, pro-Serb challenger Andrija Mandic had 20.4% while liberal candidate Nebojsa Medojevic had 15.7% for third place, the Centre for Monitoring said last night. It cited the final vote count by its own monitors at polling stations.

Official results are expected today, but the independent monitors said the ranking of the candidates would not change and there would be no run-off because Mr Vujanovic won more than 50% of the votes cast.

Liberal opposition candidate Medojevic conceded defeat, with his party Movement for Change citing the same figures.

The ballot cements the independence of the tiny Adriatic Sea nation of 620,000 people. It also was a test for Mr Vujanovic’s reformed socialists, who have ruled virtually unchallenged for nearly two decades.

Turnout was 69%, about 22 percentage points higher than in 2003, when Mr Vujanovic won his first five-year term, independent election observers said.

Huge fireworks lit the sky over the capital, and Mr Vujanovic’s supporters honked car horns and waved Montenegro’s red flags with a golden eagle in downtown Podgorica soon after the results were announced over state television.

Ethnic Serbs, who make up about 30% of the population, are unhappy about Montenegro’s separation from Serbia following a May 2006 referendum. They are seeking closer political and economic ties with Belgrade, which have been chilly since the break-up.

Mr Vujanovic, of the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists – one of the staunchest advocates of Montenegro’s split from Serbia – said his victory shows that “a majority of Montenegrins support our policies”.

“I won for Montenegro and its future,” Mr Vujanovic told hundreds of his cheering supporters. “I will be the president of all the people in Montenegro.”

Montenegro was an independent kingdom before the First World War, then part of Yugoslavia until that nation disintegrated in violence in 1991. Montenegro remained joined with Serbia until it seceded peacefully.

Since the split, its economy has boomed. Annual economic growth is about 8% and foreign direct investment since 2006 has been about £840 million, propelling Montenegro to the top of Europe’s per capita foreign investment list.

But it has had trouble getting rid of its image as a society rife with corruption.

“The vote has shown that Montenegrins are still not ready for change of the corrupt and totalitarian regime,” Mr Medojevic, the liberal challenger, said.