Seventeenth anniversary of the death of the former president of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova is commemorated this Saturday. He passed away on January 21, 2006 and was buried with high state and military honors. 

Ibrahim Rugova was born on December 2, 1944 in the village of Cercë, municipality of Istog. On January 10, 1945, the Yugoslav communists shot his father, Uka, and grandfather Rrustë Rugova, who had been a well-known fighter against the Chetnik gangs that had infiltrated Kosovo during the Second World War. 

Ibrahim Rugova completed primary school in Istog, secondary school in Pejë, in 1967. He completed the Faculty of Philosophy - Albanian Language and Literature Branch in Prishtina. During the academic year 1976-77 he stayed in Paris, at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, under the supervision of Prof. Roland Barthes, where he pursued his scientific interests in the study of literature, with a focus on literary theory. He received his doctorate in the field of literature at the University of Pristina in 1984. 

Dr. In 1988, Ibrahim Rugova was elected president of the Writers' Association of Kosovo, which became a powerful nucleus of the Albanian movement, which opposed the Serbian and Yugoslav communist rule in Kosovo. 

As a distinguished intellectual who has given voice to this intellectual and political movement, Dr. Ibrahim Rugova was elected, on December 23, 1989, by the founding president of the Democratic League of Kosovo, the first political party in Kosovo that directly challenged the communist regime in power. LDK, under the leadership of Dr. Ibrahim Rugova quickly became the leading political force in Kosovo, gathering the majority of the people around him. 

In cooperation with other Albanian political forces in Kosovo as well as with the then Assembly of Kosovo, Dr. Ibrahim Rugova and the LDK have completed the legal framework for the institutionalization of Kosovo's independence. 

The declaration of independence (July 2, 1990), the declaration of Kosovo as a Republic and the adoption of its constitution (September 7, 1990), the popular referendum on the independence and sovereignty of Kosovo, held at the end of September 1991, were the prelude to the first multi-party elections for Assembly of Kosovo, held on May 24, 1992. Dr. Ibrahim Rugova has been elected President of the Republic of Kosovo. Dr. Ibrahim Rugova was re-elected President of the Republic of Kosovo in the elections held in March 1998. 

Under the leadership of Dr. Ibrahim Rugova's LDK won the majority of votes in the first internationally sponsored local elections in post-war Kosovo in October 2000, as well as in the first national elections in 2001 and in the second local elections in 2002. LDK won and the national elections in 2004. 

Dr. Ibrahim Rugova was elected President of Kosovo in March 2002 and was re-elected in 2004. Dr. Ibrahim Rugova died on November 21, 2006 in Pristina and was buried in the Sunshine Coast with the highest honors of the people of Kosovo. 

On the anniversary of the death of Ibrahim Rugova, on January 21, 2007, the President of Kosovo, Dr. Fatmir Sejdiu has decorated the historical President of Kosovo with the "Hero of Kosovo" Order, the highest title in our country given to Albanian and Kosovo historical figures who have done "acts of bravery for the freedom and independence of Kosovo".