Shiroka Pula, the 73-year-old president of Kosovo’s Academy of Sciences and Arts and a former economy minister, won 81 votes in the 120-seat assembly, one more than the required two-thirds majority. She becomes Kosovo’s third female president since independence. Her election followed a deal between Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s Vetevendosje party and the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo: the assembly first advanced amendments limiting the powers of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, and the opposition then supplied the votes for her presidency.
The bargain is politically explosive. On September 16 the Specialist Chambers sentenced former president Hashim Thaçi and three others to a combined 81 years in prison for war crimes during the 1998-99 independence war, and police used tear gas and water cannon on Monday against demonstrators demanding the court-curbing law be approved. The president must endorse the amendments for them to take effect.
The vote closes a political crisis that produced 19 months of legislative deadlock and two early parliamentary elections, though the court’s authority now faces its most direct domestic challenge since its creation.