Kosovo‘s parliament elected Justina Shiroka Pula president in the first minutes of Wednesday, minutes after lawmakers passed amendments capping sentences at the Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers at 15 years, in a trade that rescued the country from another snap parliamentary election.
Shiroka Pula, an economist born in 1953, received 81 votes in the 120-seat parliament, one more than the two-thirds majority required. Two ballots were invalid and one went to her rival, Eliza Hoxha, a lawmaker from the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo, known as the PDK. The vote came just after the midnight deadline set by the Constitutional Court for Oct. 6 was reached. Failing to elect a president would have dissolved parliament and forced elections, as it did in June, and ATN has gathered that this would have been the fourth parliamentary vote in under two years.
The post has been vacant since April 4, when Vjosa Osmani’s term ended, and an acting president has filled it since. Kosovo’s presidency is largely ceremonial, but it has repeatedly caused instability because a two-thirds majority is required to fill it and parties have struggled to agree on a candidate.
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The breakthrough came on the third offer from Prime Minister Albin Kurti, whose Vetevendosje party leads the government. Two earlier nominees, Glauk Konjufca and Feride Rushiti, were turned down by PDK leader Bedri Hamza. Kurti then proposed Shiroka Pula, a former member of the PDK, and agreed to hold the Specialist Chambers vote first, which had been the PDK’s central demand. Parliament approved the amendments on second and final reading with 88 votes before the presidential ballot began.
The amendments sharply narrow the court’s reach. They cap prison sentences at 15 years, let convicts appeal to Kosovo’s Supreme Court, require sentences to be served in Kosovo rather than transferred abroad, and allow the president to pardon people convicted by final judgments. They also provide for monitoring of the court by international organizations and for a constitutional review by Kosovo’s Constitutional Court. Legal commentators noted that the changes do not by themselves dissolve the court or erase its existing verdicts.
The fight over the law spilled into the streets. Thousands of protesters gathered outside parliament and government buildings demanding passage. On Monday night, police fired tear gas and used water cannon on demonstrators who threw fireworks and stones, and police said at least 17 people were injured, including six officers, while three people were detained. That evening’s clashes followed the collapse of talks between Kurti and Hamza, and Kurti told lawmakers the amendments were “rushed and insufficiently analysed” before his party declined to back the second reading. Critics of the court argue its punishments are too harsh.
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The trigger was a verdict. On Sept. 16, the Specialist Chambers sentenced former President Hashim Thaci to 25 years in prison, and three other former Kosovo Liberation Army leaders, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi, received sentences that brought the combined total for the four to 81 years. All were convicted of war crimes during the 1998-1999 break from Serbia. Kosovo created the court in 2015 under international pressure following a Council of Europe report on alleged crimes by KLA fighters. Lawmakers condemned the verdicts in a declaration in late September, and daily protests followed.
Hamza described the day as valuable, saying the law had passed and the country would have institutional stability. A former president of the Constitutional Court said the election was consistent with the constitution.
Shiroka Pula is president of the Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts, a post she took in December 2025 as its first woman. She served as a minister in the government from 2008 to 2011, and sat in parliament for the PDK from 2011 to 2014. Reports differ on whether her ministry was economy or energy and mining. She left her party posts in 2017, according to reporting compiled by ATN, and in March both she and the PDK denied a report that the party had floated her name for the presidency.
After taking the oath, she accepted the office with what she called great honor and full responsibility. “I will be the president of all citizens,” she said, adding that the mandate does not belong to one person.
Thaci and the three co-defendants have appealed the first-instance verdict.
