2024-04-10 11:46:34
This news was announced on Wednesday morning by Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, who met with President Gitan Nausėda and discussed the unexpected decision of G. Jakštos on Tuesday – he has asked to be dismissed from his position for the second time.
Will spend time searching for candidates
Monika Navickienė will take over the position temporarily. I certainly have candidates, but I will not name any names today. As the president said that he would not be in a hurry to confirm, I also confirmed that I would not be in a hurry to provide.
Since we discussed a little about the expectations for the future minister, I will think about those expectations and then we will agree on the candidacy additionally”, said I.Šimonytė.
When asked if, for example, one of the coalition partners could be among the ministerial candidates, I. Šimonytė considered that such a decision would be quite strange, but worth considering.
“If the coalition partners show such ambition, of course, everything can be considered, but it seems to me that the Government is working according to a program that was approved almost four years ago, and that program contains things that the Government intends to implement, and now the task is not to come and to implement some new policy, ideas and ambitions, but simply to maximally fulfill what was planned”, emphasized the Prime Minister.
I.Šimonytė explained that during the meeting with G.Nausėda on Wednesday, he did not discuss specific names yet – he talked about the expectation for a person who should complete the work before the end of the term.
She intends to present more specific names to the president at the beginning of next week.
I. Šimonytė claimed to have learned about G. Jakšta’s desire to resign for the second time during the press conference held on Tuesday, but rejected his statements that the prime minister’s team was interfering with work and giving such orders that strongly contradicted the position of the ministry’s leadership.
According to the minister who decided to retire, the last order that overflowed the cup of patience was related to the evaluation scale of the eleventh intermediate examinations.
“Both the methods of decision and the deadlines can always be discussed and this is always the case in the Government. I was perhaps a little surprised by the minister’s reaction, but what now – simply, as I said a month ago, I recognize the right to an emotional reaction. We are all human and react to things in different ways,” said the Prime Minister.
The head of the government said that so far she has not heard any complaints about cooperation from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, while G. Jakštas is the government office and he himself asked for help in solving the situation arising from interim inspections.
“The minister explained where he found the Prime Minister’s proposal to be unacceptable – to consider children who passed midterms well and who appear in a worse competitive situation compared to those children who passed worse because the tasks were incorrect.
I really don’t want to comment on the rhetoric – you know very well that in the Government every minister does his job, a lot of responsibility is directly in the hands of the minister, but we probably cannot say that the prime minister does not have the right to ask the minister to pay attention to one or another problem that has arisen, for example, due to other decisions of the same minister. (…)
When it came to finding ways to resolve these procedural situations regarding the interim settlements process, the Minister himself asked for help, which the Government Chancellery might be able to provide, and we kindly offered that help.
Somehow at that time, I didn’t hear complaints that there was some kind of dictate, because usually you don’t ask people who pressure you or mistreat you to help you”, I.Šimonytė thought.
The decision was announced at a press conference
G. Jakštas announced that he will seek to resign on Tuesday during a press conference organized by the Ministry of Education and Culture, which was dedicated to summarizing the intermediate examinations of the eleventh grade.
Although at the press conference G. Jakštas initially told about the plans to solve the problems caused by intermediate inspections, soon the minister presented unexpected news – according to him, the Deputy Minister Ramūnas Skaudžius resigned at the beginning of the week, and he himself will soon submit his resignation request to I. Šimonyte.
That’s what G. Jakštas did – the request ended up on the Prime Minister’s desk just a few hours later.
Although the tension surrounded the entire management of ŠMSM due to the intermediate inspections that caused many problems, G. Jakštas revealed that he was withdrawing for another reason – I. Šimonytė’s team.
“With the Prime Minister’s team, we see that we do not have enough freedom to decide and implement decisions that we believe in ourselves. More than once I had to take responsibility for decisions that I did not make myself. I don’t want to do that anymore,” explained the minister.
“I just stated that it is not really possible for us to work under such conditions, because the premier’s team hinders more than it helps, and the work culture that comes from there is unacceptable for me personally and my team,” G. Jakštas added.
As the minister told LRT television on Tuesday evening, he was prompted to resign immediately before the press conference by an order received without discussion from the Government’s leadership team, related to the evaluation scale of the eleventh intermediate examinations.
When asked how he envisions the work of the Ministry of Education and Culture going forward, he emphasized that the ministry and the entire education system are not built on one or two people.
“The Ministry, as an apparatus, will definitely be able to function successfully. We feel responsible for the decisions, which is why we made a summary, assessed what systematic mistakes were made and how they should be solved.
Who will be the person who will continue to lead or adjust the decisions will depend on the Prime Minister’s decision,” assured G. Jakštas.
The resigning minister also provided news regarding the eleventh grade intermediate examinations themselves – it was decided that the session of these examinations will be considered a pilot, test session, so the results will be read next school year only to those students who wish to do so.
2024-04-10 11:46:34