Kosovo’s parliament has elected Justina Shiroka Pula as the country’s new president, according to Al Jazeera. Lawmakers voted in the first minutes of Wednesday 7 October, close to the constitutional deadline, which the outlet said averted early parliamentary elections that could have pushed the country into a deeper crisis.
How the Vote Came Together
Al Jazeera reported that the ruling Vetevendosje Movement (LVV) and the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) reached an agreement on her candidacy, which cleared the way for a parliamentary vote. She secured 81 votes, one more than the 80-vote two-thirds threshold required, the outlet said.
According to the report, the parties also agreed to adopt amendments changing the legal framework governing the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, the Hague-based court established to try former Kosovo Liberation Army leaders for alleged war crimes. Al Jazeera said this was an issue demonstrators had been urging politicians to address. It reported that protests against the convictions of former Kosovo Liberation Army leaders coincided with Tuesday’s midnight deadline, and that there had been 20 days of protests, including violent incidents in Pristina on the night before the vote.
Donika Emini, a research fellow at the University of Graz’s Centre for Southeast European Studies, told Al Jazeera the outcome was “above all, a politically necessary compromise to restore institutional functioning”, adding that she would not read it as proof that the underlying polarisation had been resolved.
Who Is the New President
Al Jazeera said Shiroka Pula, aged 73, is Kosovo’s third female president, after Atifete Jahjaga and Vjosa Osmani. Born in Pristina in 1953, she graduated from the University of Pristina’s economics faculty, completed postgraduate studies in Zagreb and later earned a doctorate. After a brief period at the National Bank of Kosovo she built an academic career at the University of Pristina, rising to professor and heading the department of management and informatics.
The outlet reported that she served as Kosovo’s minister of energy and mining from 2008 to 2011 and as a PDK member of parliament from 2011 to 2014. Last December she became the first woman elected head of the Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts. Emini cautioned that she should not be portrayed simply as a non-partisan academic, given that political and institutional record.
Why It Matters
The election fills the presidency after a period of deadlock. Whether the compromise holds will depend on how the agreed changes to the Specialist Chambers framework are handled and on whether the parties, none of which appeared willing, Al Jazeera said, to take responsibility for triggering another election, can keep working together.
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