“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 them now,” said Professor Mirjana Najcevska, human rights expert. , on 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.
The numbers became the subject of obtaining the rights of certain ethnic communities, after the signing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement.
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.
Instead of hearing the benefits of the census, we heard that the census is a patriotic act. What does patriotism have to do with statistical operation? The moment the call started for a boycott, politics was put first.
It is also politics that Artan Grubi started calling on all Albanians to register.
Instead of campaigning for the benefits of statistics, politicians campaigned politically.
The terms diaspora and expatriates became confused and 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.
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.
