The president who embodies change in Kosovo

Vjosa Osmani, in the Kosovo Parliament after being confirmed as president, last day 4 Anadolu Agency / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

In Kosovo, a lot happened for the first time in the elections held last February.

That a candidacy, the one led by Albin Kurti and Vjosa Osmani (today Prime Minister and President, respectively) obtain 50% of the votes, that all the parties of the

old guard

remain outside the Government

,

that two of the three deputy prime ministers and a third of the deputies are women today (almost all without the need to apply the gender quota), or that someone pulverized the record of direct votes for a candidate.

That "someone" is the very popular Osmani, 38, who reached 300,000 supporters, 117,000 above the previous ceiling, achieved by Kurti in the 2019 elections, when they were rivals.

“These milestones are not enough.

They are just a starting point to have a much stronger voice to face the daily problems of women, "he assures in a videoconference interview last Tuesday with this newspaper.

Kosovo is heading towards political and generational change

"Spain has nothing to fear from the independence of Kosovo"

Born in the now divided Kosovar city of Mitrovica, a militant since adolescence in a conservative party and a law doctor from the University of Pittsburgh (USA), Osmani was confirmed by Parliament as head of state earlier this month. She is the second president, after Atifete Jahjaga (2011-2016), of the five that the country has had since in 2008 it unilaterally declared the independence of what was then Serbia and Montenegro, which today are recognized by around half of the members of the ONU. Although the position is mainly representative, as the highest diplomatic and Armed Forces authority, it embodies like few others the generational and political change for which the most recent country (1.8 million inhabitants) in Europe bet at the polls. Even Dua Lipa and Rita Ora,The two great British music stars of Kosovar Albanian origin applauded the election on Instagram.

Osmani assures that her priorities will be justice, the fight against unemployment - especially youth and female unemployment -, integration into the EU and NATO, and increasing recognition of her country; and he shielded himself in the apoliticism of his new position to avoid defining himself ideologically. "Since I was elected, I have been the president of all Kosovars," she says.

Actually, you have achieved two squares of the circle. The first, military two decades in a center-right formation - the Democratic League, which he left in 2020 due to internal struggles - and end up achieving the presidency in alliance with a left-wing nationalist party, Vetevendosje. The second: to serve as a deputy for five legislatures with a traditional training and still be perceived as a breath of fresh air. She attributes this mainly to the fact that the bulk of her work in institutions has been technical. "My world was political, but also deeply professional," he clarifies. She was the presidential representative in the body that designed the Constitution and later represented Kosovo in the famous case in which the International Court of Justice in The Hague concluded in 2010, in a non-binding opinion,that Kosovo's declaration of independence two years earlier had been legal, given the exceptional nature of the context.

Firmness

Part of her image as an

outsider

is also due to her public criticism of her own party's decisions, to the point of boycotting the 2016 presidential elections. age in the midst of a male political structure ”, explains by videoconference the editor-in-chief of the digital publication

Kosovo 2.0

, Besa Luci.

Men like the former Interior Minister, Agim Veliu, who gave him a macho comment shortly before the elections: "I didn't know it was so big that it needed a space as big as the presidency" of the Democratic League.

Osmani already held the head of state on an interim basis between November 2020 and last March, as a result of former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci resigned as president after being indicted by the Special Court for Kosovo - based in The Hague, but part of the system. Kosovar judicial - for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Kosovo war. As you talk about it, your tone of voice changes. “We are still waiting for Serbia to repent, apologize and do justice for the crimes it has committed in Kosovo and other parts of the region, through the wars it has carried out during the Milosevic regime, which was a genocidal regime. […]. The reality in Kosovo is that the crimes were committed by Serbia. We were the victims and they were the aggressors. We cannot allow a moral equivalence between what Serbia did,actions promoted, organized and executed by the State, with what some individuals have been able to do after the war, without any organization ”.

Vjosa Osmani, last February, when she was still acting president, greets soldiers of the Kosovar Army, in Pristina.FERDI LIMANI / Getty Images

In her first symbolic acts as president, Osmani paid tribute to Ibrahim Rugova, considered the father of Kosovar independence, to a family killed by Serbian forces in 1998, to victims of war violations and to the hundreds of disappeared in the conflict. His childhood memories are marked by television images of the war in Bosnia, which began in 1992. "I went to sleep every day thinking about whether it would happen to us too," he says. His parents — him, a civilian employee in a defense company; she, a nurse - were fired as part of the increasing persecution and repression of Kosovar Albanians in the 1990s. She continued to study thanks to the parallel school system established by Rugova.On some occasion, she has said that she still cannot forget the cold of the Kalashnikov cannon that a Serbian soldier put in her mouth when she was 16 years old, before being expelled from her home by Serbian paramilitaries and forced to walk for four days.

His message is less passionate when he addresses the non-recognition of Kosovo by Spain (one of the five EU countries that does not, with Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia), even when asked about the recent decision of Show the initials of Kosovo in lowercase, next to those of Spain in capital letters, on the scoreboard of the World Cup qualifying match between both teams on March 31st. “There is not a single citizen of Kosovo who feels good about that, because we believe that sport should connect people, and not the other way around, and there should be no politics in sport. It was quite unfortunate […]. I hope that this episode will be left behind and we will have better opportunities to cooperate in that area in the future, considering Kosovo what it is and will always remain:the Republic of Kosovo as a sovereign and independent state that is here to stay ”. Likewise, and in an allusion aimed at emphasizing the differences between the Kosovar case and the independence movements in Spain, Osmani emphasizes that Spain is "built on the principle of unity of the State, which is extremely important to us", highlights the "gratitude" for his participation in the 1999 bombings against Serbia and recalls that NATO was then headed by a Spaniard, Javier Solana.highlights the "gratitude" for their participation in the 1999 bombings against Serbia and recalls that NATO was then headed by a Spaniard, Javier Solana.highlights the "gratitude" for their participation in the 1999 bombings against Serbia and recalls that NATO was then headed by a Spaniard, Javier Solana.