Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic has survived a confidence vote in parliament in the wake of receiving an invitation for his country to join NATO.
But Djukanovic had to rely on the votes of an opposition party after his own coalition partner abandoned him.
The vote was 42-20 in the 81-seat legislature with 19 lawmakers absent.
The vote signals the end of a political alliance that has existed since 1998 between Djukanovic’s Democratic Party of Socialists and the smaller Social Democratic Party.
But Djukanovic managed to get support from the opposition Positive Montenegro party, which said it won concessions from the prime minister to bring opposition representatives into some ministries in order to create conditions for a free-and-fair parliamentary election later in 2016.
Further details on that deal were not immediately available.
Djukanovic’s government had submitted the confidence motion after NATO in December invited Montenegro to join the alliance.
But the disputes that brought about the disintegration of his governing coalition were mostly over economic issues and allegations of corruption.