Montenegro holds first presidential election since splitting from Serbia

: Montenegrins ballot on Lord'S Day in the bantam Balkan state's first presidential election since it divide from Srbija two old age ago.

The ballot is another diagnostic test for Montenegro's reformed socialists, who have got ruled virtually undisputed for the past 20 years. It will also find whether the state on the Adriatic Sea Sea cements its independency or microscope slides back to Serbia's influence.

Incumbent Filip Vujanovic of the opinion Democratic Party of Socialists is regarded as likely victor of the four-man race.

Nebojsa Medojevic of the broad Motion for Changes, and pro-Serbian challengers Andrija Mandic and Srdjan Milic were likely to divide the remainder of the ballots in a deeply divided country, according to pre-election surveys.

Ethnic Serbs, about 30 percentage of Montenegro's 620,000 people, are still unhappy about the country's split from Srbija in a May 2006 referendum. They are seeking near political and economical neckties with Belgrade, which have got been chilly since the breakup. Today in Europe

"Those presidential campaigners who were against Montenegro's independency two old age ago have got no moral right to take the state in the future," Vujanovic said in an interview. "We won independence, now we have got to begin our fighting for Crna Gora in the European Union."

The 53-year-old lawyer said he is confident of winning more than than 50 percentage of the ballots on Sunday, which would debar a overflow in two weeks. His opinion political party fearfulnesses that the pro-Serbian and broad groupings could unify behind one campaigner in the possible 2nd round, seriously ambitious Vujanovic's opportunities of winning re-election.

"Whatever anyone says, Crna Gora stays a Serbian state," said Andrija Mandic, the pro-Serbian challenger. He said that his triumph would intend that the pro-independence support in the state have changed.

Montenegro was an independent land before World War I, then portion of Federal Republic Of Yugoslavia until that state disintegrated in force in 1991. Crna Gora remained joined with Srbija until it seceded peacefully.

Since the split, its economic system have boomed. Annual economical growing is about eight percentage and foreign direct investing since 2006 was about €644 million (US$1 billion), propelling Crna Gora to the top of Europe's per capita foreign investing list.

But it have had problem getting quit of its mental image as a smuggling society prevailing with corruption.

Medojevic, a broad technocrat, said his triumph would intend the beginning of an end for the 20-year rule of Montenegro's socialists, led by Prime Curate Milo Djukanovic, who throws the chief powerfulness in the country.

"Montenegrins have got had enough of their 20-year rule," Medojevic told one thousands of cheering protagonists in his concluding pre-election mass meeting in working capital Podgorica on Friday. He accused Vujanovic and Djukanovic of corruptness and economical mismanagement.

"Montenegro is an independent country, but it still necessitates to go a free and democratic state without its corrupt and smuggling-prone regime," said Medojevic, who have the support of immature voters.

Italian public prosecutors last calendar month questioned Djukanovic in an probe of allegations his authorities supported a monolithic coffin nail smuggling operation in the 1990s. The cigarets were allegedly smuggled on powerboats into Italian Republic from across the Adriatic.

Djukanovic reportedly told the public prosecutors that the coffin nail smuggling helped Crna Gora last under the autocratical former Jugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic and international countenances imposed because of his warmongering policies in the Balkan Mountains in the 1990s.