March 4 (SeeNews) - Thousands of people rallied in Podgorica on Saturday evening to demand the resignation of Montenegro's president Milo Djukanovic and prime minister Dusko Markovic in the most massive of a series of protests since February 2.
The fourth rally under the slogan "97,000 - resist" brought together more than 19,700 citizens and proceeded peacefully, according to a post of the Facebook group for the protest.
"We are giving all those whose resignation we demand a March 15 deadline to do so. If they do not do resign, on March 16 we will gather again and we will not go until our demands are fulfilled," Milos Krivokapic, a representative of the organising committee, said during the protest rally.
Commenting on the rally last month, Djukanovic said that protests are a legitimate form of expression as long as they do not become aggressive. "The elections in this country should be held in accordance with democratic rules, and everything else that the citizens propose, which leads to the improvement of the quality of life, will be considered very responsibly," Djukanovic said.
The rally was organised by citizens in the social networks after local entrepreneur Dusko Knezevic, majority owner of insolvent lender Atlas Banka, accused Djukanovic and his ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) of corruption. In January, Knezevic circulated a video showing him handing 97,500 euro ($110,600) in an envelope to the mayor of Podgorica, Slavoljub Stijepovic, to finance the DPS election campaign in 2016.
In December, Montenegro's central bank placed Atlas Banka [MNG:ATBA] and Invest Banka [MNG:IBMN] under its temporary administration, citing their poor financial condition, after audit results showed that the capital of the two lenders did not meet the minimum risk requirements. In an open letter to Montenegro's president Milo Djukanovic and prime minister Dusko Markovic in December, Knezevic said the country's inefficient justice system was at the root of the two banks' problems and expressed concerns about the quality of the central bank's work.
The protest was supported by opposition parties Democratic Front (DF), DemocraticAlliance, TrueMontenegro, United Reform Action (URA), DemocraticMontenegro and the Socialist People's Party of Montenegro (SNP).
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