The government is making the census a political and not a statistical operation and is pushing it by force, VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski said in an interview with Deutsche Welle.
Mickoski stressed that there was no other country where a census forced without consensus and without a system of control.
-“The government made the topic of the census political and that is a consequence for two reasons. The first, because it did not involve the opposition in any way to participate in this process, but on the contrary, rejected all our proposals and substantive amendments, about thirty of them. And the second reason is that this process is being pushed into force at a time when many more developed countries such as Germany, Bulgaria, Croatia, Ireland, Scotland have postponed their censuses due to the coronavirus crisis. So the rejection of all proposals, and their violence as a government, gives us a legitimate right to doubt the aims of the census. I, too, fully aware of our responsibility here, would be very careful in the qualifications and predictions, but I can certainly openly doubt the results of that census. And I assure you, if we have such a mafia census, the numbers and percentages will be a matter of decor. VMRO-DPMNE has no problem with the percentages from the census if they are realistic and an expression of the factual situation, whatever they may be, but we have a problem with the politically motivated census that Zaev pushes by force. We need a fair and objective census, and everyone should know that a fake census, which, above all, should be a statistical operation, costs the citizens wrong projections for the future and money,” Mickoski explained.
