Legal maneuvers leave leading university without leadership

A failed candidate for rector is leading a judicial complaint epic. As a result, two mutually contradictory decisions by the Sofia and Supreme Administrative Courts have left temporarily one of the largest universities in the country – Technical University – Sofia (TUS) – without legitimate leadership, as more than half of its term has already expired. The last judicial instance decided that the Internal Regulations for the functioning and activities of TUS, under which a series of rectors of the university (including the one in office until now) were elected, deviates from the principle of "one person – one vote," characteristic of equal electoral rights. The Supreme judges consider that the TUS Regulations and the resulting election of leadership are in conflict with Article 10 of the Constitution, according to which "Elections, national and local referendums are conducted on the basis of universal, equal, and direct electoral rights with secret voting." According to the current regulations of TUS, in the first round of voting, members of the General Assembly (GA) have the right to vote positively for more than one candidate, after which a runoff is held between the candidates ranked first and second. From the two ranked candidates, the Rector is elected based on the number of positive votes. The decision of the SAC raises a series of questions to which someone should eventually answer. Since members of the General Assembly were given the opportunity to support "from 0 to N" candidates in the first round, does this necessarily mean that several, rather than one, votes were exercised? That is, each member of the General Assembly gave their vote! When we collectively vote for political parties or groups (teams), are we exercising multiple votes? Does the aforementioned constitutional principle automatically apply to all spheres outside of politics? What about commercial companies, where the vote weighs according to the shares of the co-owner? Since a series of rectors of TUS, as well as deans of faculties, were elected under the same regulations, what is their legitimacy? What happens to the thousands of bachelor's and master's diplomas, hundreds of doctoral dissertations, and dozens of habilitation procedures signed by them and conducted at TUS during this period? Or does the law apply selectively to some but not others? While the case file has been returned to the General Assembly of the Technical University for conducting a new procedure for the election of a rector, the 64-year-old complainant, Prof. Vesko Panov, hopes that the Minister of Education and Science will appoint an acting rector to conduct the new election. Such acting rectors at the University of Economics in Varna and at the Technical University – Varna have been appointed in the past due to culpable behavior of their leadership. In the current case, however, it cannot be attributed to the current rector of TUS, Prof. Ivan Králov, that the General Assembly conducted his election in accordance with the current regulations, applied for decades and uncontested until now by neither the MES nor any other institution in the country. By the same principle, the heads of parties might suddenly be declared illegitimate.

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Blitz.bg, 20.12.2021