New government approved in Montenegro, Abazovic deputy prime minister

After three days of debate, Montenegro's Parliament approved the new government headed by Zdravko Krivokapic, which with two other opposition coalitions won the August 30th elections. 70 MPs participated in the session. 41 MPs voted in favour of the new government, 28 against, while an MP abstained.

The new government has 12 ministers and a deputy prime minister. The new ministers are non-party figures and experts on various fields unknown to broad opinion. Coalition Chairman “black in white”, Albanian Dritan Abazovic was elected the only deputy prime minister from the political ranks.

In his address, Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic pledged that his cabinet I would fight the economic crisis, pandemic, corruption and organised crime -- a key condition for the country's long aspirations for European integration.

Referring to criticism that the new government, pro-Serbian, will lead the country away from Western allies, the prime minister said that “Montenegro will not become a second Serbian state. Montenegro is independent and will remain such until the end. What we can say is that we will work for good relations with all our neighbors”.

In the debate over three days, numerous criticisms were made by the opposition against the new government's programme and composition and the prime minister himself. They estimated that the new government is theocratic, appointed by leaders of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, that it is monotheistic and mono-ethnic, and that it is not the government of experts and Europeans as presented.

The new government has been the first for three decades to be formed without President Milo Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), which lost in this year's August 30th elections.