Haxhiu’s acting presidency in Kosovo hits the six-month line with no successor

Kosovo entered 5 October with an acting president whose six-month constitutional limit, counted from 4 April, has run out, and with no elected successor in place. Assembly speaker Albulena Haxhiu has held the acting office since President Vjosa Osmani’s five-year mandate ended on 4 April. Paragraph 3 of Article 90 of the constitution says an acting president may not serve more than six months.

The Assembly was due to sit on amendments concerning the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in the same window. Legal analysts put the court-set deadline for electing a president at 5 October, the day after the acting-presidency clock, on one reading, expired. No candidate had the votes on Monday. The institution that is supposed to dissolve the Assembly if that election fails is the president, or the acting president.

Two clocks, not one

The deadlock is a product of two separate timers that land on consecutive days. Osmani’s term ended on 4 April. Haxhiu, as speaker, became acting president that day. Six months from 4 April is 4 October. Separately, after the Assembly was constituted on 6 August, a 60-day period for electing a president was calculated by legal analyst Eugen Cakolli as running to 5 October. The Constitutional Court has treated a failure to elect inside that period as a trigger for dissolution. The person who dissolves the Assembly is the head of state.

That is why the argument about Haxhiu’s status is not ceremonial. If she can still act on 5 October, she is the officer who would sign a dissolution. If the six-month bar has already emptied the office, it is not clear who signs.

Haxhiu was re-elected speaker on 9 September. The presidency has said she continues as acting president until a new head of state is chosen. On 2 October she said she was considering going to the Constitutional Court on the mandate if the Assembly failed to elect. Political scientist Ognjen Gogic, speaking to Kosovo Online on 5 October, said the open questions are whether she can serve after 4 October at all, and whether her September re-election as speaker started a new six-month cycle.

Where the constitution does not fit the facts

Gogic’s point is a drafting gap. The six-month paragraph is written for a president who is temporarily unable to perform the duties, not for a case in which no president has been elected. Kosovo is in the second situation. A strict reading still applies the six-month cap, because the office of acting president is what the speaker holds. A purposive reading asks whether the cap was meant for a vacancy at the end of a term. The Constitutional Court has not ruled on that distinction in this crisis.

A second gap is personal versus institutional. The acting presidency attaches to the speaker’s office, not to Haxhiu by name. If another speaker had been chosen in September, would that person have had a fresh six months? Her re-election raises the same question about her own clock. Gogic said the answers matter because dissolution runs through that office.

Melos Kolshi of the Kosovo Law Institute has taken the stricter view. He said the constitution and the court’s existing case law cap an acting presidency at six months, counted from the end of the elected president’s mandate. On that view, 4 October was the end, and the days since are uncovered.

What the Assembly can still do

The Assembly can still elect a president if the parties find the votes. It can also sit on the Specialist Chambers amendments it had scheduled. What it cannot do, on the text, is extend an acting presidency by silence. Either a candidate is elected, or someone has to say the deadline has passed and dissolve the chamber, or the court is asked to say which of those steps is lawful.

Haxhiu has already pointed at the court. Gogic has pointed at the gap in Article 90. Until a judgment or an election arrives, Kosovo has a speaker, an Assembly, and a dispute about whether it has an acting president. The date that created the dispute is 4 April. The date that made it unavoidable was 4 October.