The Emperor’s new clothes: Serbia’s first female gay prime minister

By Aleksandar Pavlović

Seemingly against all odds, Serbian new President and previous Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić named as his successor Ana Brnabić, a young, Western-educated lesbian. “I love Vučić!” , emphatically shouted my Albanian colleague upon hearing the news, thus exemplifying a typical international reaction to such outcome. After all, Vučić can’t be that bad if he’s handing down the government to a lesbian, can’t he?

Dà©jà  vu: From Prime Minister into President and back

To understand such outcome, it’s instructive to make a step back to the recent Serbia’s presidential elections. When Vučić’s party colleague Tomislav Nikolić’s mandate came to an end, Vučić decided to resign as the Prime Minister and run for the President rather than to risk having an opposition party representative in that role. And he made a clear victory, scoring over 50% of the votes already in the first round. But the Presidential title has more of a symbolic than a real power in Serbia, with one notable difference – unlike the Premier, the President is elected directly by the people. Hence, running for presidency serves more to consolidate the power and help your party than to capture real executive power, which rests with the Prime Minister and the government.

So, how do you turn on the cabinet but retain your control over it? If Putin-Medvedev castling seems distant, one could point to Nikolić’s predecessor, the then Democratic Party leader Boris Tadić, who already successfully made similar manoeuvre in 2008 by naming Mirko Cvetković as a conveniently weak prime minister. Cvetković is nowadays remembered less by his achievements and more by his nickname Santa Claus, which he deserved for his long white beard. And, just like Tadić a decade ago, the only thing clear about Vučić’s choice was that he will select someone weak and obedient. In this Premier-President relationship, it’s clear who is Christian and who is Ana-stasia.

If any doubts about the nature of their relations remained, Vučić effectively cast them by his public claims that the new government “will have one or two ministries more” than the previous one, that Brnabić “will be in charge of economy and digitalization” , while the Socialist Party leader Ivica Dačić “will essentially lead the politics” . Some analysts even characterized these statements as anti-constitutional, emphasizing that the Constitution prescribes that the President names the candidate for the Prime minister, who then selects the cabinet. Thus, by giving such statements at the press conference held in his Presidential Office, Vučić already exceed the role that his authority and public function bear. That hardly anyone noticed it at all, only shows how Vučić deciding on anything and everything appears so natural in nowadays Serbia.

In the same manner, one should not be deceived by the alleged opposition to Brnabić among the Vučić’s party and coalition members. Such concerns over her sexual and ideological background were not leaked in the press, but publicly voiced by the Minister of Interior NebojŠ¡a Stefanović, who excels in his proverbially blind loyalty to Vučić. Again, the undisputed Serbian leader showed himself as a public showmen and attention seeker, staging a drama over the non-existent acceptance with his choice. To be sure, their discontent with this lesbian outsider was warranted, but so was their obedience.

Who is Ana Brnabić?

Thus, Ana Brnabić became a perfect match for a number of reasons – she did her BA and MA in the USA and UK respectively, and worked in NGO and private sector until 2016, when Vučić appointed her as the Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government. In that capacity, she launched an ambitious reform of public administration designed to enable the citizens to obtain most of the documents on-line and thereby make an end to the appalling queuing and sluggishness associated with Serbian bureaucracy. Yet, her ambitions and results aside, as the first female Serbian Prime Minister, and more so as a lesbian, without political party behind her to back her up, Brnabić is somewhat the personification of the wretched of the Earth and hence can rely only on Vučić’s support, which can be withdrawn at any time. Again, one could find parallels with former Serbian Finance minister Lazar Krstić. Vučić selected the then under-30, Western educated Krstić while introducing the unpopular financial cuts in mid 2013, only to force his resignation less than a year later over a seeming dispute. Krstić was then made to play the role of a sacrificial lamb, while Vučić took the credits for lowering the proposed cuts in wages and pensions. By the same token, Ana Brnabić can be used to introduce any harsh and unpopular measure that Vučić seems fit, and conveniently removed at any point that could boost his public rating, which remains his top priority. In a nutshell, from an outer perspective Vučić can now collect international points for his choice, but also send an internal message that no one is outside the Sultan’s mercy and that he can raise anyone to prominence, as long as they remain loyal and faithful to him.

Certainly, there’s no need to doubt her good intentions, comprehensively expressed during her 79 pages and 90 minutes long yesterday’s expose in the Serbian National Assembly. In these, she focused on bureaucratization and brain drain as acute problems in Serbia, and described the digitalization, economic reforms and IT sector development as the means to combat it. The plan, taken in itself, seems like a meaningful one. Whether she has the capacity to pursue it is another issue. As it appears for the moment, with all the limitations (im)posed on her, her achievements will depend less on her abilities and energy, and more on Vučić on whose behalf she will administer the government and who will decide on her admin credentials and level of clearance.

Aleksandar Pavlović is a researcher at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory of the University of Belgrade and an associate of European movement in Serbia He is currently a fellow of the Centre for Albania-Serbia Relations at the Albanian Institute for International Studies in Tirana. He holds BA and MA from the University of Belgrade and PhD in Southeast European Studies from the University of Nottingham.