The “Kaçanik Constitution”, the constitution of the Republic of Kosovo, approved on September 7, 1990, by the Assembly of Kosovo, known according to the place of its promulgation, was adopted. It was the second step of constitutional and political constitutive acts (after the Constitutional Declaration of July 2), which defined the foundations of Kosovo’s citizenship and independence. With this act, in fact, the advancement of the constitutional-political position of Kosovo from an autonomous unit to an independent unit, within the community of Yugoslavia, was expressed. The constitution consisted of an introductory part and a normative part. The reasons for the adoption of the Constitution and its goals were emphasized in the preamble. The normative part consisted of 9 parts distributed in a total of 140 articles. In the general provisions, the Republic of Kosovo was defined as “the democratic state of the Albanian people and members of other nations and national minorities of Serbs, Muslims, Montenegrins, Croats, Turks, Roma and others living in Kosovo”. Kaçanik’s constitution saw Kosovo as a “member of the community of Yugoslavia” and expressed its orientation for equality with the other federal units of the former Yugoslavia. Other general provisions defined the position of the citizen, as the bearer of power, the state organization of the Republic of Kosovo and the attributes of its citizenship. The main organs of the Republic of Kosovo were defined as: the Assembly of the Republic, the Presidency of the Republic, the Government of the Republic, the courts and public prosecutions, the People’s Bank, and the Constitutional Court of Kosovo. With Amendment II of the Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo of 1991, the institution of the Presidency was replaced by the President of the Republic, as an individual head of state. (In the photo: Constitution of Kaçanik, 1990.)
Text: The encyclopedic dictionary of Kosovo – Vol. I, Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo, Prishtina, 2018, page 924.
Graphic processing: AHCF
