Serbia’s president yesterday (15 June) named an openly gay woman as the next prime minister, a milestone move for the deeply conservative country and the wider Balkan region.

Ana Brnabić, 41, will take the premiership less than a year after she entered politics, becoming public administration minister last August.

“I decided to propose Ana Brnabić as prime minister-designate to the parliament of Serbia,” President Aleksandar Vučić told reporters.

“I believe that Brnabić has professional and personal qualities to be prime minister… and that along with other ministers she will work on improvement and progress of our Serbia,” he added.

Brnabić said serving her country was the “greatest honour”.

“I will work in a devoted and responsible way with great love and honesty,” she told public broadcaster RTS.

Brnabić becomes Serbia’s first female prime minister and the first openly gay premier in the Balkans, where homophobia remains widespread.

#Serbia’s Ana #Brnabic becomes world’s second-ever openly lesbian PM after named as Vucic's successor. Updates to follow. Photo: Emil Vas pic.twitter.com/KteWK7G2vp — Balkan Insight (@BalkanInsight) June 15, 2017

Serbia is home to about seven million people, most of them Orthodox Christians.

But it has been eager to show increased tolerance after coming under pressure to improve protection for minorities, including the LGBT community, since it began talks to join the European Union.

At Belgrade’s Gay Pride march in 2010, 150 people were injured as hardline nationalists attacked participants and clashed with police. That led officials to ban the parade for the next three years.

Since then, the annual marches have passed without incident, though they are guarded by an extensive security presence.

In interviews after she became a minister last year, Brnabić expressed the hope that people would look beyond her sexual orientation.

“Why does it matter? I don’t know why it matters,” she told the regional RTV channel last week.

“What is important is whether someone is capable, professional, hard-working, honest, likes their country and wants to work in its best interest.”

She is expected to take office in the next few weeks.

I don't pretend to know whether Ana Brnabic will be good. But at least it's not Ivica Dacic, who I do know would have been bad. — Cooper Hewell (@cooperhewell) June 15, 2017

A telling choice

Vučić had been serving as prime minister himself since 2014 until two weeks ago, when he became head of state after winning the presidential vote in April.

Hundreds rally in Belgrade to protest Vucic election victory Hundreds of people rallied peacefully for a second night in Belgrade yesterday (4 April) to protest against the overwhelming victory of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić in a presidential election.

While he has won praise from abroad and has led Serbia into the EU accession talks, at home Vučić has been accused of authoritarian rule and clamping down on media freedoms.

Serbs continue to protest election outcome Ten days of protests against Serbia’s election results continued on 13 April, with Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić minimising their importance, and the opposition saying that the political system needs changing. EURACTIV Serbia reports.

The presidential job is largely ceremonial, but analysts expect that Vučić will move to consolidate his influence.

Before Thursday’s announcement, his SNS party — which has a comfortable majority in parliament — said Vučić would make the decision on his successor.

When he appointed Brnabić to his cabinet last year, Vučić said that he was interested only in her work and that “her personal choices do not interest me”.

“Vučić is trying to show that Serbia is a free liberal country in which civic freedoms are at a high level,” political scientist Boban Stojanović told AFP.

“That could of course be just a ‘camouflage’ of the situation as the reality is nowhere near that.”

Stojanovic added that Vučić “wanted to show to all other political actors in Serbia that he is the most powerful person in the country and that no other politician is close to him.”

Brnabić, who is not officially affiliated with any party, told RTV last week that the president has “a certain role as a mentor to the prime minister, at least in the first few months”.

The premier-designate entered politics after a career in the business sector and local development programmes.

She has an MBA in marketing from Britain’s University of Hull and worked as a director at the renewable energy firm Continental Wind Serbia.