Actively tagging along with somewhat more seasoned Communist League members like Momir Bulatović and Svetozar Marović, Đukanović was still only 26 years old when the trio effectively gained power through full institutional control in Montenegro on 10 January 1989. They forced out the old Montenegrin communist guard by riding the wave of the anti-bureaucratic revolution, an administrative putsch within the Communist League orchestrated by Slobodan Milošević and the state security apparatus. Effectively, Đukanović, Bulatović, and Marović became Milošević's extended hands in Montenegro, controlling the political and security apparatus he was in the finishing stages of molding to his personal preferences.