After President Pendarovski accepted the opposition objections about the legitimacy of the census in principle, but rejected them on practical grounds, as too expensive, a Macedonian businessman from Switzerland showed that how easy and inexpensive it will be to assure the public in the entire process. The census issue is becoming hotly debates as the Zaev regime plans to hold it in spring, and to allow the counting of long term emigrants as citizens.

VMRO-DPMNE warned that the proposal, as it stands, is very open to abuse, and insists that fingerprint machines are used to avoid having the same person counted multiple times, and also to avoid counting residents as citizens. “We will end up with three million people, the way things are going”, observed VMRO leader Hristijan Mickoski.

President Pendarovski agreed that using a fingerprint device and matching the results would be a good idea, but insisted that there is not sufficient time for this, and that the machines are too costly. But businessman Vasko Beleski told Alfa TV that purchasing 10,000 such devices would cost just 190,000 EUR. “It’s a minor sum for an operation that will cost five million EUR”, Beleski said, noting that they are used in many countries and can easily be linked to simple mobile phones.

Ethnic Albanian parties demand that emigrants are counted in the census in an attempt to bolster the Albanian share of the population. Desperate for Albanian votes, Zaev has indicated that he will accept these demands. Disputes over the process ended the last attempt to hold a census, in 2011, and left Macedonia without reliable statistical data for almost two decades.