The government of Robert Golob continues to politically appoint its own people to senior positions even without them having the necessary competencies and meeting the required conditions for the said positions. We recently saw another example of this when the Minister of Culture, Asta Vrečko from the Left party (Levica), appointed Marijan Rupert, who does not even meet all of the required conditions, to the post of Acting Director of the National and University Library (NUK) in Ljubljana.
In addition, according to some sources, Marijan Rupert is a family friend of the Minister and her family.
The illegal appointment was brought to the attention of the public by the recently dismissed head of the National and University Library, Viljem Leban, who took over the management of the Library during the government of Marjan Šarec in 2019. Leban warned in a separate letter published by Požarreport that the appointment of Rupert as acting director is illegal.
“The decision on the establishment of the institute of the National and University Library sets out the conditions for the appointment of the NUK director and, consequently, also for the appointment of the acting director of the Library. Among other conditions is the requirement that the candidate has at least ten years of experience in managerial positions, including at least five years of experience in the management of a public institution or a service with the same or similar activity,” he wrote.
As he further stated, “under the Employment Relations Act, a manager is a person who heads a business area or organisational unit of an employer and has the authority to conclude legal transactions or to make independent personnel and organisational decisions.”
“Marijan Rupert has never held a senior position at the National and University Library and has no authority to conclude legal transactions or to make independent personnel and organisational decisions. He has never headed a public institution or a department with the same or similar activities … Nor did he have the required powers when he worked as a librarian, and in 2006, by a decision of the then-Director, was appointed Head of the Manuscript Collection, which was part of the Special Collections Unit. This accounted for 20 percent of his workload at the time,” he pointed out.
“The positions of ‘Librarian’ and ‘Librarian with a master’s degree’, in which the appointee was working under his employment contract, also do not include the functions or powers to conclude legal transactions or to take independent personnel and organisational decisions and are not managerial posts. The Minister of Culture has therefore appointed a candidate who does not meet the required conditions for the post of Acting Director of the National and University Library,” Leban added.
Moja Dolenjska
