Marmulaki: The Assembly violated the law for Secretary General, and Haxhiu and Konjufca are responsible

The position of the Secretary General of the Assembly has been exercised for more than two years by the task adviser, while the recruiting process for this position has been completed since December 2024. While, on March 30th, the Kosovo Assembly has again declared the new competition, as neither candidate has received enough votes, according to them.

Kemal Marmulaki, senior researcher at the Kosovo Institute for Justice (IKD) for reopening the competition for this post, drew criticism, stressing that legal violations were made by the current Parliament Speaker, Albulen Haxhiu, and by former Parliament Speaker Glauk Konjufca.

Marmulakaj in an interview for Online Economics said the process has violated the legal security of candidates who have participated in the process.

Kosovo's “Institute of Justice has reacted to this process by presenting the process of respelling the contest for the selection of Kosovo's Assembly Secretary General as a process that is contrary to legislation in force. This process violates the rights and legal security of candidates who have participated in this process, leaves the country's highest institution without the top senior leadership position in this institution, and risks creating a new standard for senior leadership positions in the institutions of the Republic of Kosovo's 87x1>, he said.

Marmulaki explained the procedure after the end of the secretary's mandate in 2023.

“What has happened from our monitoring has been noted that in June 2023 it has expired the former Kosovo Parliament Secretary-General's mandate, and in mid-June of the same year, a director has been appointed to the position of task leader or current legislation deputy secretary-general of the Parliament. And the same guy had this job trained by the end of 2024, when the competition was opened. The competition applied if I do not wrong 11 people for this position, of which two have been selected as candidates who have met the legal criteria. And according to the law the headship of the Assembly is what makes the Secretary General's selection. Despite the fact that it belonged to legislation, all procedures have continued and were kept under legislation in force and referred to the final outcome of the Parliament's Headship, the Parliament's Headship, which makes the final selection, failed to make a decision, and three members of the Parliament's Headship have voted to cancel the process, while three others abstained. As a result, the sufficient number of votes has not been reached, and it has come to a conclusion to re-stoll this position”, he stressed.

He mentioned two legal violations that have been committed to this position.

“In this case we have two cases of legal violations, under the Law of Public Officials in the first instance in the 2024 laws, allowed a position to be held by a task officer or substitute twice out of six months, and the fact that in June 2023 the term of the former secretary general has expired, and a person has held this position for more than a year, is legal violation and legal violation is that he is not permitted to be annulled by law, one of the candidates needed to choose the office of the Secretary General and therefore, the decision that the head of office has committed in this case, 1125>

As far as responsibility is concerned, the researcher also blamed current Parliament Speaker Albulen Haxhiun.

The main responsibility for allowing the deviation of the process is the Speaker of the Assembly. The manager also has the former head of the Assembly who did not implement the law during the eighth legislature, and now has the Speaker of the Assembly, but also has members of the Headship who, knowingly or unknowingly, have abstained for such an important process of functioning of the Republic of Kosovo”, he says.

As for the conclusion of this process, Marmulaki said that three months ago the procedure cannot be completed.

“are the legal deadlines on the basis of legislation in effect on how much the competition then takes on the establishment of the ad-hoc commission, the process of conducting interviews with the written test and oral interviews and recommendations made by the respective department for human resources, recommendations made to the Parliament's Headship for selecting a member of a new candidate for the Secretary General for the Parliament. I estimate that, based on all these parameters, there can be no faster than three months from now”, he added.

The process of selecting the secretary-general began on August 31st, 2024, with the public competition for this senior ruling category position declared. The competition has been open until 29 September 2024 and has applied eleven candidates, of whom only five have met the legal criteria and competition criteria.

After verifying applications, the Directorate for Human Resources Management has continued procedures with the appointment of the ad-hoc Commission, organising the writing test on November 21st, 2024, and oral interviews on November 25th, 2024. The final results have been published on November 26th, 2024, while after the deadline for complaints and confirmation by the Independent Council for Civil Service that no complaints have been filed, on December 30th, 2024 the final report has been handed over to the Parliament's Head of Decisions.

In this process, the two candidates who have passed the legal threshold and have been nominated for selection have been Arben Loshi with 90.2 points and Taulant Bajrami with 88.2 points. There has been no complaint, no procedural dispute and no remarks on the legality of the process.

On March 4th of this year, Deputy Secretary General Arben Loshi has been dismissed from his post.

Instead, Chief Parparliamentary Haxhiu appointed Xhedin Hodza.

On March 30th, the Kosovo Assembly has again declared the new competition, as neither of the candidates have received enough votes.

“None of the proposed candidates Arben Loshi and Taulant Bajrami received the votes needed to be elected to the position of Secretary of the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo”, it is said in the decision of the Parliament, which the chief parliament signed, Albulen Haxhiu.