TIRANA, April 21 – After being suspended as Rector of the University of Tirana and awaiting for President Ilir Meta’s final verdict to dismiss him, Mynyr Koni, invited in the TV show “The Unexposed” said the TU Administrative Board is completely under the government’s control.
Koni said he demanded the removal of Chapter 12 in the law for Higher Education, which allows the privatization of public universities.
“Until the adoption of the law, we argued for all the changes that should have been made in the legal form. One of these was the removal of Chapter 12, for independent public institutions. As the law came into power, we were obliged to implement it. During the protests, I repeatedly expressed the need for a comprehensive review. Now I am openly saying that this chapter should be removed because it allows the establishment of a private institution within a public one,” Koni said.
Further on, Koni publicly demanded the TU is audited for the last ten years, for it to become functional and normal again.
“There are certain interest groups that want to legitimize the actions that have been taken. I have made denouncements at the prosecution, for levels of chancellors and deans who are currently under investigation. The period of my suspension is a period that will be used to get rid of these issues but it is useless,” Koni said.
Last Sunday, on April 14, the new Minister for Education Besa Shahini announced Koni’s suspension and said she has proposed to Meta to dismiss him.
Shahini accused Koni of failing to implement the government’s pacts and reforms and said that the new administration model has worked in all other universities but that of Tirana.
She said that Koni had not sufficed with the academic competences legally granted by the law but had sought administrative competences, while prohibiting the respective bodies to undertake them and creating a rift among the leading bodies of the TU and hampering the educational process.
Further on, Shahini said that in February 2018, the ministry had send an inspection group at the TU to verify the implementation of the law on higher education and had later verified, in the fall of 2018 during a second visit, that their recommendations had not been applied by Koni.
Through a Facebook post following Shahini’s media announcement, Koni denied there was ever a visit by an inspection group altogether and said this suspension was to be expected, after all the attacks he had received as head of the TU.
During “The Unexposed,” Koni said he hopes Meta will not decree his dismissal.
“Believing in the integrity of the President of the Republic, I ask him to evaluate this as a very urgent and important case for the institution of the Rector of the University of Tirana. I believe in the President’s integrity,” Koni said.
In December 2018, students from Tirana’s universities held two-week long rallies in front of the education ministry, seeking the improvement of Albania’s education system after the 2015 amendments in the Law for Higher Education through eight demands.
The Socialist government promised students a university pact to bring down the protests’ intensity, to be implemented starting 2019, although the country’s opposition and a number of students said that none of the government’s proposals truly met the students’ demands.
In her rationale for suspending Koni, Shahini also said he had become a hinderer of the government’s university pact, which is in fact a political act, rather than a legal one.
