Podgorica, 4 April (AKI) – Around 400,000 voters will go to the polls in Montenegro on Sunday to elect the president of the tiny Balkan republic.

But according to election surveys, the incumbent Filip Vujanovic is tipped to win the four-man race.

Vujanovic is a close ally of prime minister and head of the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists leader Milo Djukanovic, who has been an unchallenged boss of Montenegro for the past eighteen years.

Vujanovic said he expected to get over 50 percent of votes and win in the first election round.

The other three candidates, Srdjan Milic of the Socialist People’s Party, Andrija Mandic of the Serb List and Nebojsa Medojevic of the Movement for Changes were likely to split the rest of the votes in a deeply divided country, surveys showed.

If the contest is not decided in the first round, the first two candidates will proceed to a run-off.

In the final television debate Thursday night all candidates said that membership of the European Union was their main goal.

But the opposition candidates attacked Vujanovic and his party for tolerating corruption and organised crime, making it the main issue of the campaign.

Djukanovic himself testified before Italian prosecutors in Bari last week on charges of involvement in a multimillion dollar cigarette smuggling racket in the 1990s.

He denied the charges, but opposition leaders claimed he only went to Bari because he was protected by diplomatic immunity.

Djukanovic quit politics after leading Montenegro to independence from a state union with Serbia in 2006, but returned to the post of prime minister again in February this year.