The new Government of Serbia: Who is the "dragon woman" and the others in ministerial posts and why are the two most talked about

Of the 23 ministers, ten are women

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Photo: Fonet
Photo: Fonet
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

The new Government of Serbia will have the largest number of women in ministerial positions since the beginning of the multi-party system - as many as 10, and with the mandate of Ana Brnabić, gender equality in the executive branch will be almost completely satisfied.

Of the 23 ministers, ten are women - among others, Zorana Mihajlović and Jadranka Joksimović, who kept their ministerial positions, along with new names such as Irena Vujović, Darije Kisić Tepavčević and, surprisingly for many, Gordana Čomić, who was a prominent member of the Democratic Party and a long-time MP of the opposition.

"The idea of ​​the Serbian Progressive Party to include a greater number of women has several origins, but it is primarily about women who are important for the party itself and the circle of important people for SNS in their party hierarchy.

"This is primarily about the role played by Zorana Mihajlović, Marija Obradović, Irena Vujović and Maja Gojković," Bojan Klačar from the Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID) told the BBC in Serbian.

Vukosava Crnjanski, director of Crta, believes that "judging by experience and similar decisions from the recent past", there is no room for "optimism and faith" that something will fundamentally change with this decision.

"It is indisputable that now Serbia will rank better on various international lists that deal with the representation of women in decision-making positions, but those lists rarely talk about whether they really have the essential decision-making power," Crnjanski told the BBC in Serbian.

So far, the largest number of female ministers, six of them, was in the second government of Mirko Marjanović, from 1998 to 2000, and in the interim government in 2000, after the fall of Slobodan Milošević's regime.

In the parliamentary elections held in Serbia on June 21, which were boycotted by part of the opposition, and foreign and domestic observers had objections to certain irregularities, the ruling Serbian Progressive Party won 60,65 percent of the votes and 188 mandates.

Announcing the names of candidates for ministerial positions, Aleksandar Vučić said that the new government will have a "fixed mandate", announcing extraordinary parliamentary elections for April 2022.

New non-party faces - Gordana Čomić on target of criticism, Kisić Tepavčević from the Crisis Staff to the Government

After the election, Vučić announced that 50 percent of the new government could be women, and that it is possible that Ana Brnabić's cabinet could include some from the opposition whose parties did not pass the census.

That's exactly what happened.

Although she was not on the list of the Serbian Progressive Party in this year's parliamentary elections, the leading position in the new Ministry for Human and Minority Rights and Social Dialogue went to a former high official of the Democratic Party, Gordani Čomić - to another non-partisan figure, but with great political experience.

"We never disagreed on anything, I once said on television that I respect her way of political action, regardless of the fact that she and her family were the most prominent in all the protests, both against me personally and against SNS," said the leader of the progressives after the meeting of the top of the party and the announcement of the names of the candidates for ministers.

He did not explain what the department for social dialogue means.

"In this way, Aleksandar Vučić is sending the message that SNS is a democratic party, that it is a party that has no problem including people who think differently and people with whom they had serious political disagreements in the past. This means Gordana Čomić," says Klačar.

DS

"To the greatest extent, her goal will be to be some kind of link between the Government, that is, the authorities and the ruling parties and other actors in the dialogue that, as things stand, expects all of us," adds Klačar.

Čomić has been a deputy of the Democratic Party for several mandates since 2000, and from that position, in the previous parliamentary session, she submitted a proposal that the representation of women on electoral lists should be 40 percent in the future, which was adopted in February.

In this way, she ignored the decision of the DS to boycott the work of the parliament, which is why "the ethics committee suggested initiating disciplinary proceedings, not expulsion from the partyDragan Lutovac wrote on Twitter at the time.

In May, she announced that she was deleted from the membership of the Democratic Party.

In the 2020 parliamentary elections, she was a candidate on the list of the United Democratic Serbia coalition, which won less than 1 percent.

On social networks, Gordana Ćomić and the proposal from the top of SNS to be a minister were the most commented on:

In several convocations, she performed the function of vice-president of the Assembly of Serbia, and an incident during her chairing of the session when she was a deputy of the Serbian Radical Party will also be remembered. Gordana Pop Lazić threw a shoe.

She is an activist of the women's movement and the "Women's Political Network", and in 2006 she was elected president of the DS Women's Forum.

She graduated in physics, and was an assistant at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad from 1984 to 1999.

She is a passionate fisherman and mother of four children.

A little less stormy, but no less unnoticed, was the proposal that the candidate for Minister of Labour, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs be a member of the Crisis Staff for the suppression of the Kovid-19 epidemic and deputy director of the Institute for Public Health Milan Jovanović Batut, Ph.D. Darija Kisić Tepavčević.

In the previous seven months, her name, along with some other epidemiologists, was most often cited in the media, because she was the most prominent and regularly reported on the course of the corona virus epidemic in Serbia.

"Each of us did our job. Am I surprised? And yes and no. Am I ready to give my best? Yes," said Darija Kisić after it was announced that she was a candidate for minister.

Darija Kisić Tepavčević was born in Sarajevo in 1975.

She graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade in 2001, where she then obtained a master's degree in epidemiology, and then a doctorate in the study of multiple sclerosis, according to her official biography.

At the end of 2010, she was nominated for the position of assistant professor, and she is currently an associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade.

Students are on her website "Rate the professor" gave 3,38.

During the epidemic, her statement was mentioned about how the first case of the corona virus in Serbia was recorded on March 1, a few days before the Serbian Progressive Party organized a mass collection of signatures in support of the electoral list.

Kisić Tepavčević stated that in question - slip and that the first case was recorded on March 6, two days after the collection of signatures for the parliamentary elections ended.

He wrote about the affairs of Bojan Kisić, her brother and the husband of former justice minister Nela Kuburović BIRN in May.

Companies close to Bojan Kisić received 27 contracts with public companies and ministries worth about 26,8 million euros, including a tender of three million euros for the maintenance of the health information system, according to BIRN.

In the text of this research network, it is written that Darija Kisić Tepavčević did not answer their questions regarding public company tenders in which a company related to her brother participated, but that she stated in a written response that he was not in charge of the "Kovid 19 information system".

Cosmetic or essential changes?

A large number of women in the Government is "a very good message for the internal public and for the voters of the SNS" because research shows that in the structure of the voters of this party "there are women above the average", says Klačar.

He says that such a move can be "good PR and a good message to the international public", as well as that the inclusion of women in the Government "can mean for SNS the creation of a different, better, more democratic atmosphere than has been the case so far".

He believes that another reason why there are a large number of women in the new government is Aleksandar Vučić's attempt to "adapt to the given circumstances as much as possible".

"They are such that we have a parliament with a democratic deficit and that extraordinary parliamentary elections have been scheduled in advance," adds Klačar.

Considering Vučić's announcement that special elections will be held "in the spring of 2022 at the latest", Klačar believes that "dramatic changes" cannot be made in such a short period of time, but that precisely in the department that Gordana Čomić won, one could expect progress because "it is certain that dialogue must happen".

Vukosava Crnjanski from Crta agrees that the current composition of the assembly lacks "pluralism", but she is also concerned about the "chronic deficit of social dialogue".

He also wonders "what does it mean that the mandate of this 'female' government was cut in half in advance"?

"The elections are waiting for us in less than 18 months, so we can expect some easy victories that will be promoted as great successes. Individual decisions on ministerial functions do not inspire much optimism if we take into account what Serbia needs to do in the coming period," he adds.

She believes that it is necessary to have more women "with competence and integrity" in the government.

"There are a lot of such women in our society, but in the almost suffocated pluralism, we don't see them. In a society 'allergic' to differences and different opinions, there can hardly be equality, no matter what the numbers of seats in the government or parliament say," he explains.

"We need progressive policies and their implementation, not nominally progressive personnel solutions."

Old names of the new Government

After two mandates spent at the head of the Ministry of Transport, Zorana Mihajlovic is returning to the Department of Energy, where she began her ministerial career in 2012.

She is also the only woman who has been in the executive branch since the beginning of the Serbian Progressive Party's rule.

But her work was known to be criticized both by the recent opposition and by individual party colleagues, most notably Vladimir Đukanović, who praised her for "he only knows how to take pictures and do nothing", and she answered him that "he does not play a moral caryatid".

She was born in Tuzla in 1970, while she finished primary and secondary school in Belgrade.

She graduated from the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade, and then received her master's degree and doctorate.

Before the Serbian Progressive Party, which she joined in April 2010, she was a member of the G17+.

She worked from 2004 to 2006 as an adviser to the Vice President of the Government of Serbia, Miroljub Labus, for energy and environmental protection policy, and then at JP Aerodrom Nikola Tesla as an adviser to the general director.

Until 2010, she performed jobs of energy advisor Prime Minister of the Republic of Srpska Milorad Dodik.

Since 2016, she has been appointed as a full professor at Megatrend University, where since 2008 she has been employed at the Faculty of Biofarming and the Faculty of International Economics.

She is a member of the Presidency of the Serbian Progressive Party.

She experienced a more significant change from the position of President of the National Assembly - where she was elected in 2014, to the head of the Ministry of Culture and Information. Maja Gojković.

Her political career has been accompanied by numerous changes, especially regarding "party jerseys".

She changed five parties: the People's Radical Party, then the Serbian Radical Party, then the People's Party, then the United Regions of Serbia and finally the Serbian Progressive Party.

From the beginning of the nineties until 2008, she was a member of the Serbian Radical Party and, as some called it, the "third man" of Vojislav Šešelj, who said that because of her merits, he wanted to declare her a "Chetnik duke".

As a radical candidate, she was elected mayor of Novi Sad in 2004.

Her mandate, which lasted until 2008, was marked by the "ATP Vojvodina" scandal related to the violation of the contract on the construction of a bus station in Novi Sad.

In the end, Ilija Dević, the owner of Auto-Transport Company (ATP), filed a lawsuit for damages, after which it was ruled that the City of Novi Sad must pay Ilija Dević 300 million dinars with interest. He also filed a criminal complaint against Maja Gojković, who was not responsible for this case, he writes Nova.rs.

In March 2008, the Novi Sad SRS board announced that Maja Gojković was no longer a member of the party, after which she founded the People's Party.

In the 2012 elections, her party appeared on the list of the United Regions of Serbia of Mlađan Dinkić.

Nevertheless, Gojković joined the Serbian Progressive Party by the end of the year and became a member of the presidency.

She will be remembered as the president of the National Assembly who spoke at presentation of the book "Diaries" by Andy Warhol in Belgrade, but also her dressing in a hijab - a headscarf worn by women of the Islamic religion, during an official visit to Iran.

She kept the department of European integration Jadranka Joksimović, who has been a minister, first without a portfolio, since 2014.

Like Gojković, she was previously in the Serbian Radical Party, where she worked from 2006 to 2007 as an associate for international relations of Aleksandar Vučić, as well as in the editorial office of the newspaper "Velika Srbija".

She is one of the signatories-founders of the Serbian Progressive Party in 2008.

She was the responsible editor of "Zemunski novina" until 2012, when she was elected as a member of parliament.

According to writing of KRIK, Jadranka Joksimović does not own any real estate or a car, while her brother - Aleksandar Joksimović "has branched businesses".

The government appointed him as a member of the Board of Directors of the "Belgrade Fair" in 2013, since then "he has been starting businesses and doing business with companies from the United Arab Emirates", according to KRIK.

She is the winner of the "Most European" award for 2015, which is awarded by the First European House organization.

In May of the same year, in the Assembly of the City of Belgrade, the Gay Straight Alliance awarded her the "Duga" award for her contribution to the fight against homophobia and transphobia.

Joksimović attracted the attention of the public in April 2018 during the meeting of the Cooperation Process in Southeast Europe, on the Hill near Kranje in Slovenia, when refused to give a statement to the Croatian journalist of television N1.

She said she didn't want to "indulge" them and was talking about something outside the context of the meeting she participated in.

"It is obvious that the essence of the actions of the aforementioned Croatian journalists is subterfuge and provocation," she said Joksimović for Tanjug.

Jadranka Joksimović is in charge of the department of European integration of Serbia, and for the first time since the beginning of negotiations on joining the European Union in 2014, Serbia did not open a single chapter in seven months, and in 2019 it opened only one - chapter 9 on financial services .

Serbia has so far opened 18 chapters out of a total of 35, and temporarily closed two.

She is in favor RTS in September 2020, she said that Serbia has five chapters ready to open, but that they are not opened due to problems within the EU.

Known and unknown faces of the coalition

After two decades, Rasim Ljajić will not be a minister, but he will be replaced at the head of the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications Tatjana Matić, a party colleague and vice-president of the Social Democratic Party of Serbia (SDPS).

Matić previously held high positions several times in departments led by Ljajić.

From 2005 to 2007, she was the director of the Coordination Body for the municipalities of Preševo, Bujanovac and Medveđa, where she was responsible for managing and coordinating the work of the Service.

In the period from 2004 to 2005, she was appointed head of the Cabinet of the Coordination Center of Serbia and Montenegro and the Republic of Serbia for Kosovo and Metohija, responsible for the organization and coordination of work, protocol and international cooperation.

From 2002-2004. In XNUMX, she held the position of assistant to the head of the cabinet of the vice president of the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the Coordination Center of the FRY and the RS for Kosovo and Metohija.

In July 2012, she was appointed State Secretary Ministry of Trade, from where she came to head this department.

Immediately before the formation of the Government, some media reported that she could take over the Ministry of Economy Andjelka Atanaskovic, whom Aleksandar Vučić repeatedly said was a "dragon woman".

Such writings have come true, and Atanasković is coming to the position of Minister of Economy in the new government, Ana Brnabić, from the position of director of the factory "Prva petoletka - nameska" from her native Trstenik.

This factory cooperated with one of the main arms dealers in the Balkans, Slobodan Tešić, and the weekly NIN announced on July 29 that the company under the control of Tešić exported large quantities of weapons from the factories "Krušik" from Valjevo, "Prva petoletka" from Trstenik and "Zastava orjuje" from Kragujevac in Armenia.

NIN, referring to the documentation that the newspaper's journalists had access to, announced that weapons from Serbian factories to the airport near Yerevan were shipped from the Nis airport on July 14 and 15, just a few days after the outbreak the last conflicts between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Atanasković was born in 1958 and graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Belgrade, department in Kraljevo, in 1982.

She is a member of the Serbian Progressive Party since its foundation, while previously she was in the Serbian Radical Party.

In the local elections of 2016, as well as this year, she was elected as a councilor in the Trstenik Municipality Assembly.

Since 2014, she has been the general director of PPT "Namenska", and she received a direct invitation from Vučić in September 2018 to start the former factory in Leposavic in Kosovo.

"I am honored that the president remembered me, I really did not expect the invitation. I immediately told him that I would visit the plant and see the condition of the machines and what the factory has," Atanasković told News.

She was declared the best manager of Southeast Europe in 2016, the Woman of the Year in the region, she received numerous awards from regional and republican chambers of commerce.

The youngest minister of the new government will be 37 years old Irena Vujović, which was assigned the department of environmental protection.

She joined the Serbian Progressive Party in 2008, while in May 2016 she became member of the SNS presidency, when she stated that it was "one of her favorite positions" and "recognition for previous work".

A month later, she was elected president of the Belgrade municipality of Savski venac. She was also a Member of Parliament, as well as an assistant to Mayor Siniša Mali in charge of social activities.

The media once wrote about her as a great supporter of the Serbian Progressive Party, during the campaign for the Belgrade elections in 2018 she was greeted with applause and ovations, so many saw her as the mayor of Belgrade, which did not happen.

Regarding Belgrade on the water, which extends over the territory of her municipality, she said that "the largest development project that was launched thanks to the visionary idea of ​​Aleksandar Vučić", as well as that he "changed the appearance of the capital of Serbia and placed it in the ranks of metropolises that are not ashamed of any European city".

She received her master's degree at the Faculty of International Economics of Megatrend University, where she is currently pursuing her doctoral studies.

There is a new, and until now unknown to the public, face in the Government Maja Popovic - a lawyer by profession, who comes to the position of Minister of Justice from the position of head of cabinet and adviser to the director of the Security Information Agency (BIA) Bratislava Gašić, reports Blic.

News they write that she received her primary education in Belgrade, and finished high school in Spain as a student of the generation - at the English college "Baleares International School", where classes were held in Spanish and English.

She finished law in Belgrade, as the "youngest graduate student", and after passing the bar exam, she continued her education at the Faculty of Law in Novi Sad, where she earned the title of "Master of Law".

She gained work experience at the Vesna Kušić Law Office, after which she worked as a judge trainee and judge associate at the District Court in Belgrade.

At the age of 26, she was elected as a judge of the First Municipal Court in Belgrade as the youngest judge ever elected in Serbia, writes Novosti.

From 2000 to 2012, she worked as a lawyer in her law firm, after which she spent two years at the City Institute for Emergency Medical Assistance as assistant director for non-medical affairs.

In 2014, she got a job at the Security Information Agency (BIA), where during her service she worked in the Directorate for International Cooperation, the Directorate for Human Resources, systemic legal, property and housing affairs, and then she was the head of the director's office.

She is the mother of two minor children, and according to unofficial information, her husband is judge of the Court of Appeal Rastko Popović, writes Today.

A long-time official of the progressives and MP, Marija Obradović, will be part of the executive power for the first time, as the Minister for State Administration and Local Self-Government.

She was born in 1974 in Kraljevo, where she finished elementary school. The biography on her website says that she graduated from the Pedagogical Academy in Kruševac and the Teacher Training Faculty in Belgrade.

She worked as a journalist, and her career began in 1991 at Radio and Television Kruševac. In the period from 1994 to 2008, she worked for JP "Ibarske novosti" and RTV Kraljevo, where she hosted the news show "Danas", for which she was awarded.

From 2008 to 2012, she worked in the Information Service of the Serbian Progressive Party, and from 2012 to 2015, she was a member of the RTS Program Board.

She was elected vice-president of the Serbian Progressive Party in 2016.

She is also remembered for her participation in last year's campaigns of the Serbian Progressive Party - "Future of Serbia" and "Digital Future of Serbia".

In the video for the first campaign, he is with Darko Glišić, the president of the SNS Executive Board, preparing sandwiches for the rally participants from the "first few hundred buses", and in the second video, he shows how "the preparation of dinner will look like in the future".

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