Ibrahim Rugova

Dr. Ibrahim Rugova, "leader of the Democratic League of Kosova (LDK), was elected President of Kosova in a session of the Parliament of Kosova held in Prishtina on Monday.

"1996, Dr. Rugova was elected a correspondent member of the Kosova Academy of Arts and Sciences, the top Kosovar institution of scholarship and science.

"Author of ten books (see below), Dr. Ibrahim Rugova was initially an editor with the Prishtina-based students' newspaper Bota e re (New World) and the magazine Dituria (Knowledge, 1971-72).

"After that, for almost two decades, Dr. Rugova was with the Institute for Albanian Studies in Prishtina, initially as a junior, later as a senior research fellow in literature. He served some time as an editor-in-chief of the Institute’s periodical Gjurmime albanologjike (Albanian Research).

"Dr. Rugova was elected president of the Kosova Writers Association in 1988, which was to prove as a strong nucleus of the mounting Albanian opposition movement to the Serbian/Yugoslav Communist rule in Kosova.

"As an outspoken intellectual, Dr. Rugova was on 23 December 1989 elected president of the Democratic League of Kosova (LDK), the first political party in Kosova to directly challenge the ruling Communist regime. The LDK became soon the leading political force in Kosova, as it assembled the vast majority of the people, although other parties and groupings emerged in the meantime.

"Under the leadership of Dr. Ibrahim Rugova, the LDK - in cooperation with other Albanian political forces in Kosova and in the former Yugoslavia, as well as the Assembly of Kosova - completed the legal framework for the institutionalization of the independence of Kosova.

"The Declaration of Independence (2 July 1990), the proclamation of Kosova as a republic and the adoption of its constitution (7 September 1990), the national referendum on Kosova’s independence and sovereignty conducted in late September 1991, were a prelude to the first multiparty parliamentary and presidential elections in the Republic of Kosova held on 24 May 1992.

"The LDK won a sweeping majority of seats in the Parliament in which three other parties were represented, whereas Dr. Ibrahim Rugova was elected President of the Republic of Kosova with an overwhelming majority of votes.

"Dr. Ibrahim Rugova was re-elected President of the Republic of Kosova in the elections held in March 1998. His party, LDK won most of the seats in the Parliament of the Republic that year.

"The LDK won 58% of the vote in the internationally-sponsored local elections in post-war Kosova in October 2000."