Caplovic: Politicians Should Sever Ties with Academia While in Politics

Bratislava, December 11 (TASR) - I wholeheartedly agree with Education, Science, Research and Sports Minister Martina Lubyova (Slovak National Party/SNS) that the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV) should be an apolitical institution and that mixing politics and science begets complications, but there's also a flip side to this - an SAV or university employee should suspend his tenure before joining politics and even though this is not stipulated so by the law, it's highly ethical and should become customary for any academic, ex-education minister Dusan Caplovic (Smer-SD) stated on Wednesday. Caplovic responded this way to Lubyova's comments on SAV's decision to call upon MP Lubos Blaha (Smer-SD) to reconsider his tenure at SAV's Institute of Political Sciences over his recent posts on social networks. "In this, I absolutely concur with the opinion of Interior Minister Denisa Sakova (Smer-SD) that it's highly questionable whether politicians should be involved with academia in the first place and this needs to be addressed," claimed Caplovic. Caplovic pointed out that he terminated his own SAV tenure when he joined politics in 2002, as he finds it a matter of principle in terms of morality. "Unfortunately, no one followed suit. And this doesn't concern only my fellow party member Lubos Blaha, but also Miroslav Beblavy, Martin Klus and many others," he claimed, adding that many politicians still teach at universities, even hold academic and university management positions while politically active in Parliament. mf/am