The leader of VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski, said Thursday in an interview with TV Sitel that the government is committing violence against the citizens of Macedonia with the census bill.

They are pushing the whole thing by force, the census is seen as a political, not a statistical operation. We tried to amend the census bill with over 40 amendments. Nobody accepted those 40 amendments, so we went with a civic initiative that we expect to be accepted by the Parliament Speaker. This will cancel the census bill, said Mickoski.

He also said that they were considering a referendum, but gave up that option in the end.