Stevo Vasiljevic / ReutersRiot police protect themselvs with shields during clashes with protesters in front of the parliament building in Podgorica, Montenegro, October 24, 2015.
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Police in Montenegro’s capital have fired tear gas for the second successive weekend to break up around 5,000 protesters who marched on parliament to demand the resignation of veteran Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic and snap elections.
Witnesses said that several shop-windows were broken in the unrest, as tear gas smoke enveloped the city center. On Saturday, as the protesters gathered at a central square in the capital, opposition leader Nebojsa Medojevic shouted “the dictator must fall”.
“More than 25 years in power would be too much even if he was Mahatma Gandhi and not this thief”, Raso, a 30-year old protester, told the AFP news agency. Police fired tear gas at opposition supporters who hurled fire bombs and torches to demand the resignation Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic’s government which hopes to steer the Balkan country toward North Atlantic Treaty Organisation membership later this year.
Furthermore, according to him, the protesters “want to annul the results of the democratic referendum from 2006 in order to eliminate the possibility that Montenegro as an independent state chooses its own policy and to, of course, return to the gravitational field of policies from the neighborhood, and from more distant addresses, who not want to manage not only Montenegro, but also the region”.
Konjevic said Andrija Mandic, a leader of the Democratic Front opposition alliance that staged the protest, and his ally Slaven Radunovic were detained for questioning about their roles in the violence.
A few of the demonstrators carried banners reading “No to NATO” and “For military neutrality of Montenegro”. Montenegro has historic ties to Russian Federation.
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Before the protest, a group of opposition supporters pelted the Albanian embassy with stones in downtown Podgorica, damaging its exterior.
