February 25 (SeeNews) - Thousands of people participated in a rally in Podgorica on Saturday evening demanding media freedom and the resignation of Montenegro's president Milo Djukanovic and prime minister Dusko Markovic over suspected corruption.
The rally, organised by citizens in the social networks, and held under the slogan "97,000 - resist" for the third time since February 2, gathered more than 9,700 citizens, according to a post of the Facebook group of the protest action.
Commenting on the rally, 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 at a news conference on Saturday.
The rally was organised by citizens 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 ($110,630) in an envelope to the mayor of Podgorica, Slavoljub Stijepovic, to finance the DPS election campaign in 2016.
At Saturday's rally, the citizens also demanded the resignation of the management of public broadcaster RTCG over biased reporting of the protests.
"We ask that the RTCG Council and the Director General of the RTCG immediately submit their irrevocable resignations," Omer Sarkic, a representative of the organising committee, said at the protest rally.
In December, Montenegro's central bank placed Atlas Banka [MNG:ATBA] and Invest Banka [MNG:IBMN] under its temporary administration, citing their poor financial condition, after audit results showed that the capital of the two lenders did not meet the minimum risk requirements. In an open letter to Montenegro's president Milo Djukanovic and prime minister Dusko Markovic in December, Knezevic said the country's inefficient justice system was at the root of the two banks' problems, and expressed concerns about the quality of the central bank's work.
The protest was supported by opposition parties Democratic Front (DF), Democratic Alliance, True Montenegro, United Reform Action (URA), Democratic Montenegro and the Socialist People's Party of Montenegro (SNP).
($ = 0.88134 euro)