[1][2][3] Protests against incumbent Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic occurred in the preceding year over issues ranging from NATO membership to electoral fraud.

The Socialist People's Party (SNP), United Reform Action (URA) and DEMOS agreed to form a pre-election alliance under the name Key Coalition,[11] with Miodrag Lekić as leader.

Fourteen remain in custody (as of 12 November 2016[update]), including former head of Serbian Gendarmery Bratislav Dikić, and some that fought for the pro-Russian side in the War in Donbass.

[1] Russian citizens in Serbia, monitoring Prime Minister Đukanović, had been supervised by the Special prosecution, which prevented them from realizing the plan.

In mid-February 2017, the opposition announced it would also boycott local elections in the country's second largest municipality, Nikšić, over the government's attempt to prosecute two members of Parliament, Andrija Mandić and Milan Knežević from the right-wing opposition Democratic Front alliance, who had been charged with involvement in a coup plot allegedly planned for election day.

[18] On 9 November 2016, Deputy Prime Minister Duško Marković in Đukanović VI Cabinet (2012-2016) was nominated as new Prime Minister by the president of Montenegro Filip Vujanović, and on 28 November new government was elected by 41 out of 81 members of the parliament (with the entire opposition boycotting the assembly), with the support of Democratic Party of Socialists, Social Democrats of Montenegro and the Bosniak, Albanian and Croatian minority parties.