The doctor of law from the University of Edinburgh, professor of philosophy of law at the UPV/EHU and honorary doctor from the University of Helsinki, Joxerra Bengoetxea (Irún, 1963), won this Tuesday’s elections and will be named new rector of the Basque Public University, replacing Eva Ferreira (Barakaldo, 1963), who was seeking re-election. Bengoetxea was a jurist at the Court of Justice of the European Union and Deputy Minister of Labor for the EA in the first government of Juan José Ibarretxe, from 1998 to 2001. He will not occupy this position until 2028, as that was the habit until now, but until 2030.
It was a campaign surrounded by controversy. The biggest happened after it was made public that one of the vice-chancellors and member of the candidacy team of former rector Ferreira, Guillermo Quindós, had actively participated in a campaign on launch defamatory messages against Bengoetxea and his candidacy. Later, the Student Council also denounced that Ferreira’s candidacy spread “hoaxes and lies to influence the vote.” Since 2008, there have not been elections with more than one candidate. That year, in fact, there was a first attempt which failed due to low participation and which ended the mandate of the current councilor of the Imanol Pradales Universities, Juan Ignacio Pérez Iglesias. Then Iñaki Goirizelaia and Marisol Esteban presented themselves, with the victory of the first.
Goirizelaia was followed by Nekane Balluerka and, on November 26, 2020, mathematician and professor of applied economics Eva Ferreira became rector of the UPV/EHU in an election with her as the only candidate. At that time, he won with the vote of 857 of 40,819 students (2.1%). On this occasion, participation increased considerably, taking into account that student participation in rectorate elections is generally low. In 2012, with Goirizelaia as the only candidate, only 1,580 of 44,240 students voted (3.57%), while in 2016, with Balluerka, turnout was 5.04% (2,032 of 40,352 students) . In 2008, the last year of competition, around 5,000 people out of 45,000 voted.
Bengoetxea defended during the electoral campaign a candidacy for the Rectorate which seeks to promote “a horizontal governance which broadens the feeling of belonging and attention to the university community”. During a collaborative process in which they visited thirty centers, they claim that in many of them the concern of those who worked or studied there lay mainly in the precariousness of employment, working conditions, especially for substitute teachers and, in some cases, even in the state of the facilities. “We have seen a sad situation in many buildings and facilities with closed laboratories that cannot be used due to their defective condition,” warns Bengoetxea.
In this sense, he expresses his “concern” about the situation in which the UPV/EHU finds itself, which, according to his regrets, instead of “arousing enthusiasm and pride among its members, students, professors, researchers , technical management and administration On the contrary, discontent, lack of hope and distance predominate between staff and services. Among the criticisms he encountered, he highlights “the painful situation of many buildings and facilities, the precarious working conditions with salaries, the heavy burden of bureaucracy, the obstacles to overcome to pursue an academic career, the low recognition of education, the fact that many functions are subcontracted to external companies, that little Basque is heard outside the classrooms and sometimes even inside, which gives the impression that the personnel is not taken into account in making decisions that concern him or that there is no communication and which, in addition, is vertical from top to bottom.
This is why he wants to find a solution: “We intend to find a solution to all this, this is why we are running in these elections and we intend to transform our university, correct its drift and place it in an agreed situation. by everyone over the next six years so that it achieves excellence.
The rector is the highest academic authority, elected by the university community, by direct suffrage and by free, secret and weighted universal suffrage. Among the permanent teaching and research staff, a full-time doctor is chosen who has at least three semesters of research, three quarters of five-year teaching and four years of experience in university management on an individual basis. The voting system in rector elections is weighted: each university group retains a percentage of the votes, so that the support received by each candidacy is expressed as a percentage. The percentages are as follows: doctoral teachers with permanent ties represent 56.25%, non-doctoral teachers with permanent ties and doctoral teachers and researchers without permanent ties represent 8%, the rest of teachers and researchers 1.59%, students 22.08% and finally the Technical Management and Administration and Services staff 12.08%.
