Latvian lawmakers on Wednesday picked the countrys long-serving popular foreign minister, a strong backer of Ukraine, as its new head of state in a tight vote.
Rinkvis, who announced in 2014 that he is proudly homosexual, will be the first openly gay president in the Baltic nations all former Soviet republics where attitudes to sexual minorities have been less tolerant than in western Europe.
His closest rival, businessman Uldis Plns, got 25 votes in the third round of voting between the two remaining contenders after the third candidate, Elna Pinto, had dropped out of the contest.
After the vote, Rinkvis tweeted that he was honored and humbled by the Parliaments decision and pledged to serve the people of Latvia well.
Rinkvis, 49, served among other posts as a state secretary with the Defense Ministry and worked as a journalist with Latvian Radio in the 1990s. As foreign minister, he has enjoyed high popularity among Latvians because of his hard stance toward neighboring Russia and his unwavering support for Ukraine.
In a news conference later Wednesday, Rinkvis urged countries to give Ukraine hopeful signals of a possibility of NATO membership in the military alliances upcoming summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July.