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50 I Southeast Europe bne April 2021
standards and with protection measures in place due to the pandemic,” the press office said in an e-mailed statement sent to bne IntelliNews.
The statistics office recently announced a public call to hire about 6,000 census takers. The government will use
a combined census method based on
a combination of field data and data from the standard statistical database obtained from existing registers by
Tough penalties for boycotts and false data
The government’s press office told bne IntelliNews that boycotting the census is “not an option”, and every citizen should contribute to the process by providing data, which is important for the government to make its strategic development plans.
“We point out that according to the census law, inciting a boycott of the
500,000 people left the country in
the last two decades, which is over 20% of the estimated population of nearly 2.1mn. According to the census in 2020, the population totalled 2.02mn, of which the majority of 64.2% were Macedonians, 25.2% were ethnic Albanians, 3.9% Turks, 2.7% Romani people and 1.8% Serbs. Other communities were below 1%.
North Macedonia is forecast to lose at least another 10% of its population by 2050, while the percentage of people over the age of 65 will rise to 25%.
Many of those who left the country managed to do so after neighbouring Bulgaria started to offer Bulgarian passports for people from Macedonia. With a passport from an EU member they can work elsewhere in Europe.
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zakharieva recently said that more than 100,000 citizens from North Macedonia also have Bulgarian citizenship and their rights should be protected, deepening the rift between Sofia and Skopje. In February, the Ivan Mihajlov Cultural Centre in Bitola, North Macedonia, asked the authorities in Sofia to allow citizens of North Macedonia who declare themselves to be Bulgarians in the upcoming April census to obtain Bulgarian citizenship
in a shortened procedure by submitting a photocopy of their declaration.
Thus, the claim that the census can be used for political manoeuvres is not a complete lie – although the authorities in North Macedonia have said people won’t be allowed to copy census forms.
In the previous census in 2002, only 1,417 people declared themselves to
be Bulgarians, or 0.07% of the total population, according to emagazin.mk.
Opposition doubts and obstructions
VMRO-DPMNE started collecting signatures on February 20 in an attempt to force the government to cancel plans for the April census. After collecting over 100,000 signatures the party submitted its draft law to the parliament to annul the census on March 3.
A group of people have also formed
“According to the census law, inciting a boycott of the census is a criminal offence"
using ID numbers. For the first time, census takers will use laptops while collecting field data instead of paper questionnaires.
The census will enumerate people, households and homes. It will provide data on the number of residents, the number of non-residents and total size of the population.
A sociologist from North Macedonia, who asked to be identified only by his initials, S.N., told bne IntelliNews that April is the most suitable month for this type of operation for many reasons related to the methodology. “But if we enter the labyrinth of party manipulations then the range of possible dates is huge and endless. There is no real reason for the delay and any calculations with dates
will only confirm there is desire for manipulation and will certainly affect the confidence in this statistical operation,” he said.
S.N. admitted that unfortunately due to a combination of circumstances,
– mostly the extreme partisanship of society – an atmosphere of collective fear has been created. “Collective deception and not accepting the truth has become a reality to such an extent that the logic of rational reasoning is completely lost,” he said, adding that in this context, people are forgetting about the basic functions of the census.
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census is a criminal offence. Those who refuse to be enumerated will be subject to misdemeanour proceedings, and face fines of up to €300,” the press office said.
After programmers found flaws in the application people abroad are using for self-registration, the director of the statistics office, Apostol Simovski, said that people could face three years in prison for entering false data.
“Some may register and think they managed to enter false data, but in fact the system itself will show that the data is not valid. We will register such cases as a deliberate intrusion into the application,” Simovski stated.
“The statistics office is an institution with a long tradition and capacities that are supported by technical assistance from the EU and other donors. The methodology presented is completely appropriate and there is no doubt that it’s in line with the EU/international standards,” sociologist S.N. said.
He described the public suspicion
that something is hidden behind the methodology as “pathological”.
Fears of being less
“The forthcoming census will confront us with our greatest fears. But these are not fears of the 'others', but of how many there are in the country now," President Stevo Pendarovski was cited by DW. According to unofficial data, about