Representatives from a group of parties led by the pro-Russian Democratic Front in Montenegro have failed to reach an agreement to form a government led by Prime Minister-designate Miodrag Lekic, rferl.com informs.

“I said that the government will be serious or there won’t be one. There won’t be one, and let the citizens interpret who was serious,” Lekic said after the meeting on January 4. He did not elaborate on why the talks failed.

Lekic had said that he hoped to form a new government — comprised of the Democratic Front, the Democrats and the Ura movement — by January 20. The three parties control 81 of the legislature’s 81 seats.

“We did not succeed in what we started out to achieve…. We invested a lot of energy to reach an agreement,” said Andrija Mandic, one of the leaders of the Democratic Front.

Mandic added that given the situation, simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections should be called.

The tiny Adriatic country has been gridlocked since the government of Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic fell in a no-confidence vote in August.

Lekic was subsequently handed a mandate to form a government on the basis of controversial amendments to the law on the president, under which the parliamentary majority took over part of the constitutional powers of President Milo Djukanovic.

Djukanovic, along with European authorities, have said the curbing of the president’s authority contradicted the constitution and should be changed.

Lekic has been on the political scene since the 1990s when he was the foreign minister and the ambassador of Yugoslavia to Italy during the rule of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

As a member of parliament, Lekic opposed Montenegro joining NATO in 2017 and voted against a resolution condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine earlier this year.