Movement in the Balkans

Two steps forward recently for democracy in the Balkans. First in Montenegro, which went to the polls a week ago (see my preview here) in a parliamentary election that marked a further step away from its history of one-person rule. For the first time ever, the post-Communist DPS, led by former president Milo Đukanović, did not finish in first place.

Instead it was the centrist Europe Now! that topped the poll with 25.5% of the vote and 24 of the 81 seats (see official results here). The DPS-led ticket was second with 23.3% and 21 seats, followed by the right-wing pro-Serbian For the Future of Montenegro (14.8% and 13 seats) and the centrist joint ticket of the Democrats and URA (12.5% and 11 seats). A minor social democratic party just cleared the 3% threshold with 3.1% and two seats, and ethnic minority parties (which are exempt from the threshold) picked up the remaining ten seats: six Bosniak, three Albanian and one Croat.

Putting together a new government is not going to be easy. An obvious route to a majority would be Europe Now! plus Democrats/URA and most of the ethnic minorities, but (as often happens with those that seem ideologically close) relations between Europe Now! and URA, the party of caretaker prime minister Dritan Abazović, are especially bad.

The centrists and the pro-Serbs have governed together before, but it ended badly and is likely to be worse now, since For the Future of Montenegro is suspected of being close to Russia while the centrist parties are pro-Ukraine. Reconciliation with the DPS, which at least is pro-western, would be the other option, but the leader of Europe Now!, Milojko Spajic, has ruled that out.

In Bulgaria, on the other side of the peninsula, an even more difficult exercise in coalition-building has finally been successful, although it took an extraordinary four elections. There too the war in Ukraine has demanded some difficult decisions (see my previous report here).

The problem in Bulgaria was that there were two ways of looking at the political spectrum – pro-Russian vs pro-western, and reformists vs corrupt establishment – and they cut more or less at right angles to each other. In the end it was the former that proved the more important, and the main establishment party, the centre-right GERB, and the main reformist ticket, We Continue the Change/Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB), agreed to co-operate: despite their major differences, they are both pro-Ukraine.

The two party leaders each waived their claim to be prime minister. Instead they reached an agreement that PP-DB would provide the prime minister for the first nine months – scientist and former education minister Nickolay Denkov – to be followed by GERB’s nominee, Mariya Gabriel. With a large majority between them, Denkov was confirmed in a vote of confidence, 132 to 69.

Pro-Russian forces are outraged, including not just the assorted opposition parties but also centre-left president Rumen Radev. Something, however, had to be done to stem the tide of elections, and this coalition seems the best of a bad set of options.