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Lawmakers in Kosovo elected economist and academic Justina Shiroka Pula as the country’s new president in a marathon late-night session, moments before a constitutional deadline that would have forced a snap election.
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The election late on Tuesday was a significant moment in a political crisis in the small Balkan nation that has caused legislative deadlock for over 19 months and two early parliamentary elections.
Just before Shiroka Pula was elected, lawmakers also approved a law limiting the powers of a special court in The Hague, which was set up to investigate and prosecute war crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the country’s 1998-1999 war for independence from Serbia.
During the extraordinary session in parliament, Shiroka Pula secured 81 votes in the 120-seat parliament. Outside, thousands of protesters had gathered demanding that the legislature pass the law limiting the powers of the war crimes court, known as the Specialist Chambers.
Shiroka Pula recently served as president of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo. She is now Kosovo’s third female president since the country’s post-war independence was declared in 2008.
She was a last-minute consensus candidate backed by the ruling leftist Vetevendosje or Self-Determination party and the largest opposition party, the centre-right Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK).
The president of Kosovo plays an important role in foreign policy and serves as commander-in-chief of the security forces, while also approving laws passed in the national assembly, among other powers.
One of Shiroka Pula’s first responsibilities will be to endorse the law limiting the Hague court’s power for it to become binding.
In her speech after taking the oath of office late on Tuesday, Shiroka Pula said she accepted the appointment “with great honour and full responsibility”.
“This mandate does not belong to one person alone, it belongs to our citizens, our institutions, and the state for which many generations have sacrificed,” she said.
Shiroka Pula’s election came after over two weeks of protests following a verdict by the Hague-based court convicting four of Kosovo’s wartime rebel leaders of war crimes, including the country’s former President Hashim Thaçi.
The court sentenced them to between 13 and 25 years in prison.
Many Kosovars believe the verdicts were unjust because the KLA — which Thaçi was one of the leaders of before entering politics — had fought against Serbian oppression, fearing that the court ruling would tarnish Kosovo’s independence struggle.
More than 13,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, were killed during the conflict in Kosovo, while about 1 million ethnic Albanian Kosovars were driven from their homes during the fighting.
Additional sources • AP
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