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Romania’s Next Prime Minister May Be Both Female and Muslim

This is the kind of news you rarely see in progressive countries like the United States, such as when Ilhan Omar made history in the 2016 election by becoming the first Somali-American lawmaker in the United States. Essentially, this is the kind of news you’d expect to hear from anywhere but Romania.

Liviu Dragnea, chairman of Romania’s Social Democratic party (PSD), which won recent parliamentary elections, proposed Wednesday that Sevil Shhaideh take the post of prime minister. President Klaus Iohannis is consulting with political leaders before nominating a prime minister, who Parliament needs to approve. If approved by lawmakers, she would become the country’s first female and first Muslim prime minister.

The little known Shhaideh was minister for regional development for six months in 2015, a ministry she has worked in since 2012.

Mr. Dragnea is banned from being premier because of a conviction for election fraud. The new Parliament could vote to change the 2001 law which bans anyone with a conviction of holding a ministerial post.

According to Romanian news media agency Digi24, Sevil Shhaideh was born on Dec. 4, 1964 and is of Tatar origin and Muslim faith. She graduated from the Academy of Economics at Bucharest (Romanian: Academia de Stiinte Economice din Bucuresti) in 1987 with a degree in Economical Planning and Cybernetics. In 2007, she acquired a master’s degree in Business Project Management from the College of Economics at Ovidius University (Romanian: Facultatea de Stiinte Economice a Universitatii “Ovidius’”).

The two biggest political events this year were the Brexit vote and the vote that led to Donald Trump being  elected as the next president, both decisions made by people who fear change, immigrants and Muslims. That’s true for a lot of people in Romania too, who state that not being able to read a person’s name should be a factor that determines whether they’re qualified or not for a job, or who find swearing on the Quran and not the Bible unimaginable.

We can move past those things, we can be more accepting of people’s differences, and we can change the world for the better. As we’re approaching the end of a rather catastrophic year, it’s nice to see we can be progressive, despite some people’s mindsets.

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