March 20 (SeeNews) - Montenegro's former president and former prime minister Milo Djukanovic said he will run for president in the country's elections on April 15, ending a three-year absence from the political scene.
"This decision is an expression of my responsibility towards the legacy and needs of the future development of Montenegro," Djukanovic said in a video file posted on the website of public broadcaster RTCG on Monday.
Djukanovic said he expects that the election race will be completed already in the first round.
Montenegro has a two-round presidential election system. If no candidate wins an absolute majority in the first round, the front-runner will face the second-placed candidate in a run-off vote two weeks later.
Djukanovic is the leader of the Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro (DPS), which has been in power since the introduction of multi-party system in 1990. He served as prime minister of Montenegro from 1991 to 1998, as president of the country from 1998 to 2002, and as prime minister again from 2003 to 2006, from 2008 to 2010, and from 2012 to 2016.
The incumbent president of Montenegro, Filip Vujanovic, was reelected in the first round of the 2013 election on 51.2% of the vote. Vujanovic is ineligible in the April elections as under the Montenegrin Constitution each president can serve up to two terms in office.