Kosovo’s parliament elected economist Justina Shiroka-Pula as the country’s new president in the early hours of Wednesday, avoiding another round of snap parliamentary elections.
Shiroka-Pula received 81 votes in the 120-seat Assembly, one vote above the required threshold. Failure to elect a new president would have triggered the dissolution of parliament and early parliamentary elections.
“This mandate does not belong only to one person. It belongs to our citizens… I will be the president of all citizens,” Shiroka-Pula said after the vote.
According to Reuters, her election followed an agreement between Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s ruling Vetëvendosje movement and the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) concerning limitations on the powers of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague.
Shiroka-Pula, born in 1953, is the president of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo and a professor of economics. She previously served as Kosovo’s economy minister from 2008 to 2011.
Reuters noted that the Kosovo presidency is largely ceremonial, but the election of a president has frequently been a source of political instability because the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the Assembly for the first two rounds of voting.
Her election brings an end to the latest political deadlock, which had raised the prospect of another parliamentary election only months after Kosovo’s previous political crisis.
