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BIRN: Gjinushi is re-elected without a contest at the head of the Academy of Sciences

Politiko 2023-10-20 20:41:30

BIRN: Gjinushi is re-elected without a contest at the head of the Academy of

The Academy of Sciences gave a second mandate to the president Skënder Gjinushi on Friday, after the legal changes in July of the socialist majority that opened the way for his re-election.
The election was held in a closed process, without the presence of the media and without competition, where Gjinushi, a retired politician, received 98 percent of the vote.

According to the press office of the Academy of Sciences, out of 54 members of the AS Assembly, 53 members participated in the vote, of which 51 voted for it and 2 against it. Only 44 members voted physically, while 9 others sent their vote by envelope, as they were not in Albania.

In these votes, the deputy chairman Vasil Tole was also elected for a second term with 50 votes in favor and 3 against. Gjinushi called the democratic elections and support for the reforms he had undertaken in his first 4 years at the head of the academy.

"Each candidate has himself in hand, and everyone has been invited, the law gives them the right," he said, commenting on the lack of competition.

The ruling socialists changed the ASH law several times, first giving Gjinushi the opportunity to run for president in 2019 and then changing it again to give him the opportunity to get a second term. The last legal changes passed in the Assembly with a process strongly contested by the opposition, while Gjinushi himself admitted before the Media and Education Commission that he had been the initiator of these changes.

The member of this commission, DP deputy, Ina Zhupa, appealed these changes to the Constitutional Court.

"Skender Gjinushi wore the custom-made suit that was sewn by the illegality of the socialist deputies," she reacted on Friday after the end of the voting in the ASH. According to her, the elections were a farce and illegal, since his mandate had ended on July 18.

The socialist majority declared in 2018 that it will reform the Academy of Sciences, but the new law brought the election to its head of a Gjinushi, former chairman of the Social Democratic Party for more than 2 decades.

The president of the time, Ilir Meta, refused to hold Gjinushi's swearing-in ceremony, noting the fact that he is a politician and not a scientist. Socialists changed the law in order to enable Gjinushi to be sworn in in the assembly and not in the presidency.

The Academy of Sciences was then filled with retired socialist MPs who suddenly started introducing themselves as academics. In July, the socialists intervened again in the law by removing the restrictions of running for 2 consecutive mandates./BIRN