The doctor in Law from the University of Edinburgh, professor of Philosophy of Law at the UPV/EHU and honorary doctorate from the University of Helsinki, Joxerra Bengoetxea (Irún, 1963), has won the elections held this Tuesday and will be named the new rector from the Basque public University, replacing Eva Ferreira (Barakaldo, 1963), who was seeking re-election. Bengoetxea has been a jurist at the Court of Justice of the European Union and Deputy Minister of Labor for EA in the first Government of Juan José Ibarretxe, from 1998 to 2001. He will hold the position not until 2028, as was customary until now, but until 2030.
The candidate Eva Ferreira has obtained 36.37% of the weighted vote, while Bengoetxea has obtained 63.63%, thus becoming the new rector of the UPV/EHU. Regarding participation by sector, the number of people who have voted has increased in all of them. In this sense, of the 50,590 people called to vote, 11,081 people have voted. Of them, 2,870 have voted for Ferreira and 7,599 for Bengoetxea. 530 have been blank votes and 82 of them were null.
After a half-hour wait, in which the winner was scheduled to speak first, Eva Ferreira finally began speaking, congratulating the new rector and thanking “the friends and colleagues” who have supported him. “In life, if you take risks there will be successes and there will be failures. We must always look at failures head-on, and at successes it is better to look at them a little from the side. Today I have to learn with my head held high. The candidate is dismissed, but the rector remains, with her team until the new appointment is made. And, of course, our hand is extended and we will do everything possible to facilitate that transition,” Ferreira indicated.
Bengoetxea, for his part, has acknowledged feeling “excited and excited” and has spoken first of all that the campaign has been “a lively and sometimes tough campaign.” Just as during his campaign speeches he has used the simile of rugby values to tell Ferreira that together they celebrate “the third half.” “We would like to celebrate with you not our victory, but the participation that has occurred in these elections. The university has spoken,” he stressed. Despite the latent joy, he recalled that the students will be “at the center” and asked them to continue “being critical.” “We will ask you to be critical, we will not sleep. Our point of view will be to care for all people and for them to be an active part of the university. We await your criticism and your control. Together we have achieved it,” the new rector acknowledged.
It has been a campaign surrounded by controversies. The biggest came after it became public that one of the vice-rectors and member of the candidacy team of the until then rector Ferreira, Guillermo Quindós, actively participated in a campaign in X to launch defamatory messages against Bengoetxea and his candidacy. Later, the Student Council also denounced that Ferreira’s candidacy pours “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 that was frustrated due to low participation that ended the mandate of the now advisor of Imanol Pradales Universities, Juan Ignacio Pérez Iglesias. Then Iñaki Goirizelaia and Marisol Esteban presented themselves, with victory for the first.
Goirizelaia was followed by Nekane Balluerka and, on November 26, 2020, the mathematician and professor in Applied Economics Eva Ferreira became rector of the (UPV/EHU) in an election with hers as the only candidate. At that time he achieved victory with the vote of 857 of 40,819 students (2.1%). On this occasion, participation has increased considerably, taking into account that student participation in Rectorate elections is usually low. In 2012, with Goirizelaia as the only candidate, only 1,580 of 44,240 students voted (3.57%), while in 2016, with Balluerka, the participation was 5.04% (2,032 of 40,352 students). In 2008, the last year with competition, about 5,000 out of 45,000 voted.
Bengoetxea has defended during the electoral campaign a candidacy for the Rectorate that seeks to promote “horizontal governance that expands the feeling of belonging and care of the university community.” During a collaborative process in which they have visited thirty centers, they maintain that in many of them the concern of those who worked or studied there resided mainly in job insecurity, working conditions, especially for substitute teachers and in some cases even in the state of the facilities. “We have found a sad situation in many buildings and facilities with sealed laboratories that cannot be used due to their defective condition,” warns Bengoetxea.
In this sense, it shows its “concern” about the situation in which the UPV/EHU finds itself, which, according to its regret, instead of “awakening enthusiasm and pride among its members, students, professors, researchers, technical management and administration staff and services, instead, discontent, lack of hope and distancing predominate.” Among the criticisms he has encountered, he highlights “the painful situation of many buildings and facilities, the precarious working conditions with salaries, the heavy burden of bureaucracy, the obstacles that must be overcome to pursue an academic career, the poor recognition of teaching, 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 staff are not taken into account when making decisions that affect them or that there is no communication and that, in addition, is vertical from top to bottom.”
For this reason, he wants to find a solution: “We intend to find a solution to all this, that is why we are running for these elections and we intend to transform our university, correct its drift and place it in a situation agreed upon by all during the next six years to May it achieve excellence.”
The rector is the highest academic authority, elected by the university community, through direct election and free, secret and weighted universal suffrage. A full-time doctor who has at least three six-year terms of research, three five-year teaching terms and four years of university management experience in a single-person position is chosen from among the permanent teaching and research staff. The voting system in rector elections is weighted: each university group maintains a percentage of the vote, so the support received by each candidacy is expressed as a percentage. The percentages are as follows: doctoral teaching staff with permanent ties account for 56.25%, non-doctoral teaching staff with permanent ties and doctoral teaching and research staff without permanent ties account for 8%, the rest of the teaching and research staff 1, 59%, the students 22.08% and, finally, the Technical Management and Administration and Services staff 12.08%.
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