The new Minister of Education is Slavica Đukić Dejanović. She was elected today, through a public roll call of members of the Serbian Parliament. 149 voted for, 40 against, and 5 abstained.
Slavica Đukić Dejanović will replace Education Minister Branko Ružić, also from the SPS, who resigned after the mass murder in an elementary school in Belgrade on May 3.
That Slavica Đukić Dejanović should be Branko Ružič's successor was proposed to the deputies by Prime Minister Ana Brnabić on July 19, at the first session of the current Fourth Extraordinary Session of the Serbian Parliament.
The Prime Minister then read the details from Dejanović's biography, stating that she graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, specializing in neuropsychiatry.
"In seven mandates, she was a member of parliament, she was minister for family care, president of the Assembly, acting president of Serbia, minister of health and minister without portfolio, in charge of demography and population policy," Prime Minister Brnabić explained at the time.
She also stated that Prof. Dr. Slavica Đukić Dejanović is currently her special advisor, but also that he is the author of seven books and has more than 200 scientific papers.
Members of the opposition did not agree with the Prime Minister's proposal.
Leader Dveri said that "after 33 years, the SPS is still running for the Minister of Education." After several mandates at the head of this ministry, which the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) had, we have a situation where nothing has changed in that field and that we will again have a minister from the ranks of the SPS who, of course, will not change and do anything in the education system, because if they had any good and quality idea, they would have done it by now".
He also added that "Slavica Đukić Dejanović is not enough for the 10 positions she held, but she needs 11. So where is the end".
The questions that Radomir Lazović, the head of the Green-Left club Ne davimo Beograd, asked Slavica Đukić Dejanović, were his clear assessment of the proposal that someone from the SPS lead the Ministry of Education again.
"Are you going to do something we've been talking about for so long?" Will you do something to increase the allocation from the education budget to more than five percent, as we requested? Will you do something to raise teachers' salaries? Will you advocate that we have more teachers, professors? Will you improve their working conditions? Will you employ more pedagogues and psychologists in schools because their number is small? Social workers, too," Lazović asked Slavica Đukić Dejanović.
Ivica Dacic, head of the Socialist Party of Serbia, tried to defend the Prime Minister's proposal, saying that Djukic Dejanovic "possesses all the qualities that are important for the person who will lead that department." He also said that she replaced the President of Serbia, Boris Tadić, and asked "who can dispute her qualities today".
And yet, the public, in truth the opposition, believed that it was necessary to find someone who would guarantee with his previous results that, if not solving, at least reducing the problems in education.
The most frequently expressed fear is that the appointment of Đukić Dejanović to the post of minister indicates that the government intends to turn a blind eye to the crisis and continue in the current direction, and the assessment that Serbia needs a decisive turn in the reform of the education system, from the struggle for a larger share of the education budget to reform educational curriculum and way of working so that our children do not leave school functionally illiterate.
Slavica Đukić Dejanović was sworn in today in the National Assembly. And she certainly knows what is expected of her and what is thought of her.
S.Ć./Danas/N1
Read daily news, analysis, commentary and interviews at www.vreme.com
