One day before the expiry of the legal deadline for the formation of a new Serbian government, ministers from the cabinet of the new prime minister Ana Brnabić took their oath of office. It had needed almost three months since the presidential election (on 2 April) at which the former premier Aleksandar Vučić was elected president of the republic, for Serbia to gain an almost identical government, the fourth since 2012, when the coalition headed by the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) came to power.
Up to mid-June, Vučić kept in a state of tension both the officials of his own party and those of its coalition partners who had hoped that it might indeed be they who deserved the prime ministerial armchair. Media day by day published the name, well-known and also less well-known, of the future mandatory and on that basis speculated whether there might be another snap election.
A prime minister made to the President’s measure
With his proposal that the government be led by Ana Brbanić, the non-party minister for public administration and local self-government, the Serbian president has left that question open. Brnabić has been chosen only by Vučić and not by voters at an election, and she enjoys popularity neither in the leading Serbian Progressive Party nor among its coalition partners. She described that best herself when she assessed that the most difficult thing would be establishing team spirit in the new cabinet. “I don’t have authority like Vučić and I haven’t deserved it. I have not fought an election, I don’t have my own party,” said Brnabić, “… authority has been given to me by someone who won 56 per cent support directly from the citizens.”
In the role of minister for public administration and local self-government, to which she was appointed less than a year ago, she did not achieve any important results, but neither did she do any damage. If Vučić does indeed decide to maintain the rhythm of snap elections, the eventual disappearance of Ana Brnabić from the political scene would barely be noticed.
And if he decides that Brnabić’s cabinet should survive its full term, the president will have a loyal collaborator in his prime minister. In her exposé in parliament, when she presented her chosen cabinet for approval, she stated that her government would represent continuity with the previous one and, according to all her statements and announced plans, it is clear that she will try to stay in the shadow of the man who put her in place.
And that is not the only reason why Ana Brnabić is an important collaborator for Aleksandar Vučić. At a time when she was unknown to the public at large, when he chose her to be a minister in August 2016, he himself revealed that she was a lesbian. His premier’s sexual orientation is now a welcome factor for his personal promotion. Leading international media have reported that Serbia has acquired a gay prime minister, and Vučić has presented himself as a modern politician who supports human rights, tolerance and respect for diversity.
The resistance and the criticism which individual conservative politicians from the opposition and also from the ruling coalition have directed towards the gay premier have also been to Vučić’s advantage - as an argument in front of Western dignitaries that it isn’t easy for him to rule in a country where there is disagreement with his policies, and that he is the only person who can construct a modern, stable state out of Serbia, ready for entry to the European Union. The fact that, apart from being a lesbian, Brnabić is by origin a Croat, is yet another point scored for the president of Serbia who wishes to put himself forward as a factor of stability in the still unstable Balkans.
The discussion on her sexual proclivities which filled the local tabloids for days diverted attention from certain more important details of Ana Brnabić’s CV. To criticism that her brother is director of the Aseko company which is competing for state -funded projects in Serbia, she replied that this did not represent a conflict of interest. She has yet however to explain her links with Belgrade mayor (and close Vučić collaborator) Siniša Mali, and the lawyer who has been assisting him in numerous corrupt affairs and with whom Brnabić ran the firm Energy & Innovation before she entered politics. She has also not answered questions relating to her personal property and the way she acquired it, about which the investigative portal Krik (“Cry”) has also been reporting.
New government – reconstruction of the old cabinet
Vučić’s coalition partners can also be satisfied with the choice of Ana Brnabić as prime minister. Instead of the prime-ministerial chair which he had been expecting, Ivica Dačić, senior deputy premier and foreign minister, gained two extra ministries for his Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). He thus breathed life back into his party which has, in the past five years, been completely subservient to Vučić’s Progressives, and pacified dissatisfied colleagues with ministerial portfolios.
Peace also reigns in the ranks of the Serbian Progressive Party. It can be assumed that several of Vučić’s closest colleagues had had hopes of the premiership, and the SNS had itself demanded of him that, as the strongest party, it should also head the executive. However, the president has in fact saved them from responsibility – if something goes wrong, nobody from his party will be responsible because here, again, is Ana Brnabić, upon whom all the criticism can fall.
Eighteen ministers from the previous government stayed in the cabinet and, if there had not been a new premier, it would all have just looked like a reconstruction of Vučić’s former administration. New features are a Ministry of Environmental Protection which is to be headed by Goran Trivan of the SPS, and a Ministry for European Integration to be headed by Jadranka Jovanović who has hitherto been responsible for this as a minister-without-portfolio. Also new is another ministry-without-portfolio, concerned with innovation and technology, which will be led by Nenad Popović, president of the Serbian People’s Party, a coalition partner of the SNS. The team of 21 ministers includes four deputy premiers from the previous cabinet.
Most of the public reaction focused on the rotation of two former ministers. Zoran Đorđević, who had headed the Ministry of Defence, changed places with Aleksandar Vulin, who had indeed been minister for labour, employment, veteran and social affairs in the previous administration, but had in reality been responsible for Kosovo where he had been “head-hunting” among Serbian deputies and local councillors. As the loudest puppet of ventriloquist Aleksandar Vučić, his job had also been to threaten, insult and denounce all “enemies” of the authorities, both in Serbia and in the region.
With Vulin’s appointment as minister of defence, and also by introducing Nenad Popović into the government and strengthening the socialist component, it was if Ana Brnabić, or more precisely Aleksandar Vučić, was sending a message to Russian President Putin who, in May 2016 on the eve of forming the previous government, had expressed the hope that, in its composition, “places would be taken by worthy people who will pay serious attention to the development of our bilateral relations, between Russia and Serbia”.
The paradigm of continuity
Ana Brnabić is seen by the Serbian public and Western media as a person who will continue to lead Serbian towards the European Union and, with her non-political CV, will contribute to reducing tension in the region. Euro-integration, regional cooperation, protection of human rights, were concepts that did indeed pop up in her exposé. But she devoted much greater attention in her speech to deputies to digitalization, education for the 21st century and economic stability as strategic aims. She defined her mandate with the message that she would work on “changing the existing paradigm in every segment of society”.
What she did not mention was reform of the justice system, which not one Serbian government has so far been able to complete. She also did not refer to freedom of the media: in Serbia, this exists only on the margins, while the leading electronic media and the highest circulation print media are under the control of the authorities.
She did not answer a question from a deputy on the still ongoing investigation of the occasion in March 2016 when police failed to react to the emergency calls of citizens who were being maltreated in the Savamala district in the centre of Belgrade, while buildings were being demolished on the site where Vučić’s major project “Belgrade Waterfront” is being built.
She also ignored a question as to how far the investigation had got into the crash of a military helicopter on 13 March 2015 in which seven people were killed, and for which part of public opinion assigns responsibility to health minister Zlatibor Lončar and the then minister of defence Bratislav Gašić, who is now head of the BIA, the state security service.
She avoided commenting on the accusation that, on the day of Vučić’s inauguration as president, unknown “heavies” who were subsequently identified as members of Progressive Party security, maltreated – in full view of police who did not react - half a dozen journalists who were trying to cover an opposition protest.
This and many other open questions will continue to be repeated by independent journalists, by the opposition and by part of public opinion. Some of them will also be put to her by foreign officials and European parliamentarians and commissioners who are becoming increasingly aware that, inside Serbia’s “stabilocracy”, there are no independent institutions and democratic procedures and freedoms.
She will have to deal with issues which, up to now, she has only to hear about in government sessions: the Brussels agreement on normalizing relations between Serbia and Kosovo, Srebrenica, the Russian humanitarian base in Niš, the constant demand by the USA to reveal the murderers of the Bytyqi (Bitichi) brothers, relations with the Republic of Srpska, the unfinished privatization of public enterprises and systems such as RTB Bor, the privatized enterprises of which the employees have not been paid for years, swindled raspberry-growers, burning rubbish dumps, the tabloid newspapers which make a living from announcing coups-d’état and cooking up slanders against anyone who criticizes the authorities …
The list of themes which she has inherited from Aleksandar Vučić is a long one. From the year in which she has been a minister, Ana Brnabić well knows that she is surrounded by compromised ministers and colleagues of whom some were in power during the wars of the 1990s, some have enriched themselves illegally after 5 October 2000, some have purchased academic diplomas and others the votes of electors, and all of whom together in the last five years have started to tear down almost all the institutions of state.
First among them is Aleksandar Vučić who can now, from the state’s summit to which he has removed himself from important decisions and eventual failures, continue to run the government unhindered, and who, in the new prime minister and her old ministers, will continue to have, it is certain, loyal subjects.
(Translator: John White)