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bne April 2021 Southeast Europe I 49
BALKAN BLOG:
Census sparks a political storm in North Macedonia
“Nobody wants such a country as a partner. To illustrate this, no investor would be interested in investing in a country, which has no basic statistics data about its labor resources, market and consumer habits,” it said.
“The state will not be able to plan the construction of schools, kindergartens, health facilities where it is necessary to do, and at the same time to base its policies on 20-year-old data,” it added.
Without a census in the last 19 years, nobody knows how many people live in the country and what the structure of the population is, after many, especially young people left North Macedonia in search of a better life abroad in the last few decades.
The reasons include economic hardships and recurrent political crises after years of uncertainty related to the country’s EU and Nato integration. North Macedonia finally became a Nato member in
March 2020 after it changed its name, thereby solving the long-standing name dispute with Greece that had blocked its accession, but at the end of 2020 the country faced a new hurdle – a veto from Bulgaria on the launch of EU talks, due to historical and language issues.
Census launched
Ahead of the March 3 vote of confidence, the first stage of the census had already started with people from North Macedonia who live abroad and employees in diplomatic missions able to register themselves online. Members of diplomatic missions and their families can fill in the self-registration form
from March 1 to March 15, while people who live abroad have until April 21 to complete the form.
Asked about the possibility of postponement following the opposition pressure, the government press office said that the census will be held as scheduled. The government is convinced that North Macedonia will have
a successful census.
“All institutions are ready to guarantee that the process will be conducted according to the highest international
Valentina Dimitrievska in Skopje
In such a deeply divided society as North Macedonia even holding
a census is not an easy thing to do.
With the last census held 19 years ago – the previous attempt in 2011 was called off when it became mired in political infighting – no one knows exactly how many people live in North Macedonia. The government says they need an accurate count of the population to be able to draw up long-term development plans, not to mention provide facilities such as schools and medical care to the population efficiently.
Yet the opposition led by conservative VMRO-DPMNE has seized on the census, which it says is a political exercise by Zoran Zaev’s government, and is urging people not to open their doors to census takers. The authorities have responded with threats of prison terms or hefty fines for those who refuse to take part or provide false data.
VMRO-DPMNE insists that the process must be pushed back until 2022, citing the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as well as also fears that the process will be rigged for political reasons and will not reflect the real population.
Officials from the government and
the statistics office, as well as some sociologists, say there is no reason to fear the census or postpone it, and they have sought to assure the population that the census will be held in line with all international standards.
On March 3, Zaev asked the parliament to hold a vote of confidence in his government, immediately after VMRO-DPMNE filed a draft law to the assembly on annulling the census. The motion was supported by 62 MPs with no votes against and no abstentions. Opposition lawmakers were not present in the parliament during the vote.
Data-supported development
Defending his government’s plans, Zaev has said that census data are needed for creating a development policy, to identify the regions with the highest jobless rates and pick locations for new industrial zones.
The government press office said in response to a query from bne IntelliNews said that without updated and relevant census data, North Macedonia “will be the only country in the world without real, data-supported vision for its development”.
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