Macedonian Leader Blamed for Census Fiasco

At a parliament session on Thursday held to formally annull the census, opposition parties accused the government of failing to make proper preparations and of spending some 14 million euros, the cost of the census, in vain.

“It sends a very bad message when a state cannot carry out a head count in a time of peace, regardless of the reasons,” said Stojan Andov, a former Parliament Speaker and legislator from the Liberal Democrats.

Andov blamed the failure on “lack of preparations”, accusing the government parties of adding political confusion to the statistical operation.

On Wednesday the government ordered a halt to the census after the ethnically-split commission in charge collectively quit on Tuesday, citing disagreements on basic rules for collecting data.

“Politically speaking, this is a reflection of a deep mistrust between the government partners,” Andov said, referring to the main ruling VMRO DPMNE party and its ethnic Albanian ally, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI.

Ethnic Albanian members of the commission had wanted to count people who had been living abroad for more than a year and accept photocopies of ID cards as a basis for data.

The others were against this, citing the rules of the European Statistical Agency, EUROSTAT. These say that people who have lived abroad for more than a year should not be included in a national census but should be accounted for in the countries where they now live.

The halt of the nationwide operation happened at the 11th day of the census that was envisaged as lasting 15 days.

An opposition Social Democrats vice presidnet, Zoran Zaev, said it was “pitiful” that that a normal statistical operation has turned into a "a fiasco”. His party said Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski was directly responsible for “reckless spending of budget money”.

But VMRO DPMNE said it was better to scrap the census that to let it produce incomplete and wrong data. Arguing that only a reliable census was woth completing, the party said that “the national interest has no price tag”.

Macedonia’s last population census took place in 2002, one year after the signing of the 2001 Ohrid Peace Accord, which ended a short-lived armed conflict in the country between ethnic Albanian insurgents and the security forces.

The results of the census showed that 64 per cent of the population was Macedonian and 25 per cent were ethnic Albanian. Roma, Turks, Serbs and other minorities made up the remainder of the population.