“The census has been postponed, but the question remains – why is it postponed? It is unclear to me why the census was postponed, whether it was postponed due to the pandemic because the behavior of the citizens does not show that there is a fear of a pandemic. Maybe the census was postponed due to the bad law and methodology for conducting the census, but obviously the reason is not the Census Law, because thousands of data from the diaspora have already been collected and it would be illogical to change the data collection methodology now,” said Professor Mirjana Najchevska. , human rights expert, at the CIVIL panel, “Census: Statistics, not politics”.
“This moment is problematic, because the census is a statistical and important operation, but it is indisputable that this operation is a political operation in our country. It has turned from a purely statistical into a purely political operation.
This distortion occurred much earlier with the change of the Constitution on the basis of the Framework Agreement and where the figures were related to the rights of citizens. Any counting becomes a political action.
I really do not know how the political parties will convince the citizens that the census is a statistical and not a political operation when two political leaders sat down at a table and agreed to postpone the census.
During the campaign, instead of hearing the benefits of the census, of hearing the objective parameters that are very important, we heard things that have absolutely nothing to do with this, we heard that the census is a patriotic act. What does patriotism have to do with statistical operation? The moment he started calling for a boycott, it immediately became a political act.
In all this topsy-turvy, Artan Grubi played a role, who from other countries called on all ethnic Albanians to register in order to get bigger numbers.
Instead of campaigning for the benefits of statistics, politicians campaigned politically.
There was confusion and the terms diaspora and expatriates were mixed, they could not agree on which term to use. The self-enumeration application is in bad English I found out from my close people living abroad.
In order to make the census a statistical rather than a political operation, we need to erase the numbers as a basis for obtaining rights and freedoms. Rights and freedoms cannot be related to the number of people in the country.
The Assembly must not be a servant of the political parties, and it should take on the role so that this statistical operation does not turn into a political one.
We should aim to make a fully electronic inventory by cross-referencing the data.
“If the census is held in September, there is no chance to read the voter lists, nor to change the numbers used in the elections, and we will have elections in October,” said Najchevska.
Professor Najchevska pointed out that the current government should have made a census much earlier to avoid all the problems we face. She adds that the elections, the referendum, etc. are not an excuse why no census has been conducted so far, because this year we have elections, and still a census will be conducted.
“Statistical operation is not partisanship, it is not related to emotions but to numbers and data, when we have political propaganda we can not have statistical action,” said Najchevska.
She added that in the world there are problems with the census where solutions are sought how to define the rate of racial determination.
Dehran Muratov
camera: Atanas Petrovski
editing: Arian Mehmeti
photography: Biljana Jordanovska
