The position of Secretary General of the Assembly has been held for more than two years by an acting officer, while the recruitment process for this position was completed in December 2024. Meanwhile, on March 30, the Assembly of Kosovo re-announced a new vacancy, as according to them, none of the candidates received enough votes.
Qemajl Marmullakaj, senior researcher at the Kosovo Law Institute (KLI), criticized the reopening of the competition for this position, emphasizing that legal violations were committed by the current Speaker of the Assembly, Albulena Haxhiu, and by the former Speaker of the Assembly, Glauk Konjufca.
Marmullakaj, in an interview with Ekonomia Online, stated that the process has violated the legal security of the candidates who participated in this process.
"The Kosovo Law Institute has reacted to this process by presenting the process of re-announcing the competition for the selection of the Secretary General of the Assembly of Kosovo as a process that is in contradiction with the legislation in force. This process violates the rights and legal certainty of the candidates who participated in this process, leaves the highest institution of the country without the main senior management position in this institution and risks the creation of a new standard for senior management positions in the institutions of governance of the Republic of Kosovo," he said.
Marmullakaj explained the procedure after the end of the secretary's mandate in 2023.
"What happened from our monitoring is that in June 2023, the mandate of the former Secretary of the Assembly of Kosovo expired and in mid-June of that year, a director was appointed to the position of acting or, according to the current legislation, the deputy of the Secretary General of the Assembly. And the same one exercised this duty until the end of 2024, when the competition was opened. If I am not mistaken, 11 people applied for this position in the competition, of which two were selected as candidates who met the legal criteria. And according to the law, the Presidency of the Assembly is the one that makes the selection of the Secretary General. Despite the fact that, with regard to the legislation, all procedures have continued and have been held according to the legislation in force and reference has been made to the final result of the Presidency of the Assembly, the Presidency of the Assembly, which makes the final selection, failed to make a decision and three members of the Presidency of the Assembly voted to cancel the process, while three others abstained. As a result, the sufficient number of votes was not reached and it was concluded that this position should be re-announced", he stressed.
He mentioned two legal violations that were committed for this position.
"In this case, we have two cases of legal violation, based on the Law on Public Officials in the first instance in the laws of 2024, it is allowed for a position to be held with an acting or substitute twice for six months and the fact that in June 2023 the term of the former Secretary General expired and a person has held this position for more than a year, is a legal violation and the second legal violation is that since the law does not provide for the cancellation of a position, one of the candidates should have been elected to the position of secretary and therefore we assess that the Presidency of the Assembly has committed a legal violation in this case", he said.
Regarding responsibility, the researcher also blamed the current Speaker of the Parliament, Albulena Haxhiu.
"The main responsibility lies with the Speaker of the Assembly for allowing the process to be diverted. The responsibility also lies with the former Speaker of the Assembly who did not implement the law during the eighth legislature, and now the Speaker of the Assembly, but also with the members of the Presidency who, knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly, have abstained from such an important process for the functioning of the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo," he continued.
As for the completion of this process, Marmullakaj stated that the procedure cannot be completed before three months.
"There are legal deadlines based on the legislation in force for how long the competition takes, then the establishment of the ad-hoc commission, the process of holding interviews, the written test and oral interviews, and the recommendations made by the respective human resources department, the recommendations made to the Presidency of the Assembly for the selection of a member and a new candidate for Secretary General of the Assembly. I estimate that based on all these parameters, it cannot be done sooner than three months from now," he added.
The process for selecting the Secretary General began on August 31, 2024, with the announcement of a public competition for this senior management position. The competition was open until September 29, 2024, and eleven candidates applied, of which only five met the legal and competition criteria.
After verifying the applications, the Directorate for Human Resources Management continued the procedures by appointing the ad-hoc Commission, organizing the written test on November 21, 2024, and oral interviews on November 25, 2024. On November 26, 2024, the final results were published, while after the deadline for complaints passed and confirmation by the Independent Oversight Council for the Civil Service that no complaints had been filed, on December 30, 2024, the final report was submitted to the Presidency of the Assembly for decision-making.
In this process, the two candidates who passed the legal threshold and were proposed for selection were Arben Loshi with 90.2 points and Taulant Bajrami with 88.2 points. There were no complaints, no procedural disputes and no objections to the legality of the process.
On March 4 of this year, the Deputy Secretary General of the Assembly, Arben Loshi, was dismissed from his position.
In his place, Speaker Haxhiu appointed Xheladin Hoxha.
On March 30, the Kosovo Assembly re-announced a new competition, as according to them, none of the candidates received enough votes.
"None of the proposed candidates Arben Loshi and Taulant Bajrami received the necessary votes to be elected to the position of Secretary of the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo," states the Assembly's decision, which was signed by the Speaker of Parliament, Albulena Haxhiu.
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