New Macedonian Academy Head Faces Challenges

MANU building in Skopje | Photo by: Balkan Insight

Twenty-six academics out of 41 voted for Kambovski, a law professor in Skopje. He was the only candidate and will lead the institution in the next four years.

Coming from the ranks of scholars who emerged in the late 1980s, Kambovski rose to the rank of Justice Secretary in the former Yugoslav federation.

After Macedonia declared independence Kambovski continued teaching law in Skopje before becoming Justice Minister in the government of Ljubco Georgievski in 1998. 

At the time Georgievski led the then and currently ruling VMRO DPMNE party, which is now led by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski.

Kambovski was elected a member of the academy in 2006.

The new MANU head will succeed academic Georgi Stardelov who was elected in 2008 and whose term expires this month.

MANU has existed for 50 years but in the last ten years it has suffered blows that have shaken its credibility as a leading independent scientific institution.

Two incidents in recent years have especially buffeted its standing and raised suspicions that MANU is subject to political lobbying.

In 2001, during the shortlived armed conflict between the security forces and ethnic Albanians rebels, the then head of MANU, Georgi Efremov, came under harsh criticism for backing the idea of an exchange of territories and population between Macedonia and Albania. He later resigned following the public outrage that this proposal caused.

In 2009 MANU again came under fire, this time from the Albanians across the Balkans, who objected to its publication of a Macedonian Encyclopaedia.

The tome described Albanians living in Macedonia as “settlers” who had arrived in the 16th century and referred to them as “Shiptari” – a term Albanians regard as deeply offensive.

Vlado Kambovski

The academy was forced to take the book off the shelves and order a rewrite. Prime Minister Gruevski, whose government had financed the tome, eventually distanced himself from its content.

MANU's head, Geogi Stardelov, denied allegations that the book was published hastily under strong pressure from Gruevski’s VMRO DPMNE party. Despite pressure to do so, he declined to resign.

A version of the controversial tome in CD form continues to circulate and has caused further ridicule owing to the many inconsistencies that have since been exposed.

MANU has 41 members and dozens of external members chosen from the ranks of world scientists and scholars. But the institution has no external members from neighbouring Albania, Greece or Bulgaria.

MANU’s annual budget is some €1.5 million, which many say is not enough to meet its real needs and enable it to produce scientific studies and highbrow cultural works.

Academic Milan Gjurcinov says the biggest challenges facing the new leadership will be to continue finishing the disputed encyclopaedia, devise key national strategies as well as admit new members.

“The outgoing head [Stardelov] has been saying that we started many things that we have not finished. The new presidency should finish those things for the common good of the country," he said.

"Some things are of real national importance and we should be solving them,” Gjurcinov added.