TIRANA, Mar. 28 – On Tuesday, Albania’s acting Foreign Minister Gent Cakaj announced he will dismiss a number of the ministry’s diplomatic service personnel over failing to meet the profession’s “minimal legal conditions.”
“After this careful enterprise, I am today with you to share my decision to dismiss a part of the employees who neither meet the legal nor professional minimal conditions to do this duty, let alone this government’s ambition and Prime Minister’s vision to take the Albania’s international representation to the level it deserves,” Cakaj said in a public announcement, after explaining that over the first 77 days of his duty he established a work group to “closely examine the human resources quality of Albania’s Diplomatic Service.
Informing that the number of dismissed foreign service workers will be over twenty, Cakaj added that another part of the employees will be transferred effective immediately to act and work according to the ministry’s real needs.
“Throughout the entirety of my duty, including here my open and periodic communication with all of you, Albania’s European challenge and our reformist agenda of our past history’s stagnant pond does in no way correspond with nepotism, political clientelism and moral corruption in none of the sectors, let alone in Albania’s representation globally,” Cakaj said.
Describing the decision of the foreign ministry to open its doors to excellent students as “historic,” Cakaj – whom de juro Foreign Minister and also country’s Prime Minister Edi Rama has appointed as acting FM – said this moment offers a great opportunity to “essentially revitalize” the foreign administration.
Following his announcement, which was considered by many political experts a “wipeout” of former Foreign Minister’s Ditmir Bushati personnel, Cakaj posted a Twitter reaction objecting the criticism against him.
“The reform of the Albanian diplomacy’s administration is not a “broom,” but an investment in those human resources that deserve to put the excellence of their knowledge and formation in the service of a patriotic and European diplomatic representation,” Cakaj wrote in his twitter account.
However, a list of the names that will be dismissed is yet to be announced, while political scientists and experts have criticized the time and conditions under which this decision is taking place, rather than the decision itself.
Firstly, experts commented on the government’s decision back in 2014 to completely eradicate the 20 percent quota which enabled appointments to take place outside the circle of career diplomats and allow, legally, that 100 percent of appointments could take place that way.
This, according to experts, allowed the diplomatic service to be filled by people who were, often, completely unrelated with foreign policy or diplomacy, but it was made possible with the “majority’s blessing.”
In these conditions – set by a majority of votes in parliament, rather than by the foreign minister himself – some individuals inside or outside the system were appointed indefinitely abroad, while others, coming from within the diplomatic system, were never given the chance.
Thus, some diplomats, experts have highlighted, stayed abroad for more than fifteen years, completely opposing European practice.
Examples of this government mismanagement of its own foreign service body, confidential sources revealed for Tirana Times, can be found in neighboring Greece and Italy, where individuals living there for more than 20 years as normal citizens, “in no-way related with diplomacy or foreign policy,” were appointed as heads of embassies.
Further on, confidential sources claim, for years in a row, the heads of diplomatic representations in a number of countries that are Albania’s strategic allies, including posts in the European Union and NATO, came from the foreign ministry’s technical secretariat, among citizens who lived in those countries holding a residence permit only, or people who were related to media owners and journalists.
Experts from the Albanian Institute for International Studies also pointed out a number of ambassadors had long reached their retirement age but remained in duty and other were appointed after retiring altogether.
In addition, they pointed out the ministry, on top of diplomatic representations abroad, has hired the children of businessmen or other “strong-men,” without ever clarifying how those appointments come to be, similar to the fact the ministry has now failed to provide a list of its dismissals in a transparent method.
“There is no doubt that, in theory, the decision to ‘clean’ the ministry off unqualified personnel is right, however it does well to remember it was this government that made it possible for anyone to be appointed in the first place, and so blaming one minister or another is overlooking the real problem,” an AIIS scholar said.
In this context, Cakaj’s speech in announcing the decision to dismiss staff was also interpreted as a message to Bushati, whom he replaced this January after Rama and President Ilir Meta locked horns over appointing him.
Rama’s decision to assume the role of foreign minister came due to Meta’s refusal to appoint 26-year-old, Kosovo national Cakaj as the new foreign minister after Rama dismissed Bushati in a string of dismissals following the university student protests that took place in December.
It was mainly Cakaj’s inexperience, young age and Kosovo nationality that had political experts second-guessing the wisdom of Rama’s choice, in addition to 2019 being a very important year for Albania’s foreign agenda, particularly in regards to the challenges that opening accession negotiations with the EU present.
