The Culture Minister Sex Scandal as Corruption

At the beginning of this week, the local media reported a pure and extreme case of abuse of power. The former Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports, Ylli Pango, was shown asking sexual favours from some girls in exchange of a job placement in public administration. Only a few minutes after scandal was public, the Prime Minister decided with no hesitation to dismiss the Minister of Culture Ylli Pango, also a former university professor. The scandal centred on the Minister of Culture is the first of its kind that is made public and the former Minister is the first high-ranking official to be dismissed for sexual affairs. The broadcasting of this scandal by the well-known program in Albania “Fiks Fare” left no alternative for the Prime Minister other than the immediate dismissal of the member of his cabinet. The Prime Minister’s immediate reaction seems to have found unanimous support by all the political parties, including the opposition, as well as by the media, human rights groups and others. The parliamentary majority asked for the removal of the former minister’s immunity and all other political actors joined the idea. However, while the government’s and the Prime Minister’s reaction was predictable, the arguments that the Prime Minister’s office presented for the dismissal of the minister raise a very important problem related to the understanding of this sexual scandal. The Prime Minister’s office announced for the public that the Prime Minister had decided to dismiss the Minister of Culture as the latter’s act was in absolute contradiction to the government’s morals. Basically, the Albanian government and the Prime Minister treated the issue as an ethical, moral one. The scandal of the former Minister of Culture is actually a pure and extreme case of corruption. The scandal of the former Minister of Culture is not simply tabloid gossip, a love affair between a boss and his worker. The case in hand is a typical one of abuse of a public position held by former Minister Pango. The ethical and moral arguments presented by the Prime Minister’s office for the dismissal of the Minister of Culture seem to separate the Pango scandal from the corruptive practices that are so widely applied in Albania that they have turned into a societal culture. What is the difference between the case of former Minister Pango and other officials who use their power and public office for material profit? The scandal of Minister Pango is one more, and a blatant one in fact, that shows that more often than not there is no dividing line between public and private office. Even though there are laws and procedures for the recruitment of public administration staff, the Minister of Culture provided us a live example that the laws, procedures and institutions that have been legally assigned to manage public administration recruitment are worthless and arrogantly flaunted in exchange for material or sexual profit. This is the only and the only useful approach to debating the sexual scandal of the former Minister of Culture. The prime Minister should have dismissed him on grounds of extreme corruption and abuse with power and public office, not ethical ones. It is in the same fashion that Albanian media seem to be bypassing this perspective and this understanding of the scandal of the former Minister of Culture, by focusing for instance on questions such as the legality of the use of tapping and filming devices in the scandal of the Minister of Culture.