Justina Shiroka Pula was elected as President of Kosovo in an evening which saw a roller coaster of proposals for the vacant post.

With 81 votes in favour,  and two not valid, MPs pulled a last minute save before a constitutional deadline that would have caused the Parliament’s dissolution and the fourth parliamentary elections in less than two years. Eliza Hoxha, the other candidate for the post, took one vote.

“I pledge to dedicate all my strength to safeguarding the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Kosovo”, Shiroka-Pula declared.

The 73-year-old economist, former minister and MP, and current head of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo, was nominated by Prime Minister Albin Kurti on late Tuesday evening after a day marked by a series of proposals and press conferences over the vacant presidency.

Kurti announced Shiroka-Pula’s candidacy at a press conference less than an hour before midnight, after earlier candidates did not get the backing of the opposition PDK.

 PDK leader Bedri Hamza said in a press conference after Kurti that Shiroka-Pula 

“is an acceptable name, with the aim of allowing the procedures to move forward and the conditions to be fulfilled,” Hamza said. He also proposed Eliza Hoxha as a counter-candidate.

The issue of electing the President had become tangled up with demands for legal changes to curb the powers of the Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers, which sparked anger by convicting four Kosovo Liberation Army leaders of war crimes last month.

Two opposition parties, the PDK, and Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK,  had called for draft amendments to the law governing the Kosovo Specialist Chambers to be passed on a second reading before they would come to an agreement with the government on electing a president.

PM Kurti, had claimed that electing a President was the priority, until he proposed to vote the amendments prior to electing the President as a last minute solution.

The law was changed with 88 votes in favour which limits  the jail sentences the court can hand down to 15 years. The court last month sentenced former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci and three other former KLA chiefs, Jakup Krasniqi, Kadri Veseli and Rexhep Selimi, to 25, 25, 18 and 13 years in prison respectively for war crimes. The sentences caused outrage in Kosovo as ethnic Albanians and supporters of the KLA considered the verdict against the just war against the Serbian regime. Protests became violent on Monday as protesters clashed with the police.

The adoption of the law by the parliament and election of the president on Tuesday at midnight was welcomed with fireworks and patriotic music by protesters outside the parliament building in Prishtina.

Although the session started on October 6, the vote results were announced 13 minutes after midnight, an issue which could be subject to constitutional interpretation.

Newly elected President Shiroka-Pula is an economist and the director of  the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo since December 2025.

From 2008 to 2011, she served as Kosovo’s Minister of Energy and Mining, in a government led by Thaçi as Prime Minister. She was also part of the PDK parliamentary group from 2011 to 2014.

Shiroka-Pula is the third woman to serve as president of Kosovo, following Atifete Jahjaga and Vjosa Osmani-Sadriu.