During his interview on Monday evening, VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski called on the ethnic Macedonians to fully participate in the on-going census, warning that a boycott would skew the ethnic break-down of the country. The populist Levica party is calling for a boycott, citing the fear of the coronavirus as well as the mass registration of ethnic Albanians who live outside of Macedonia as if they were actual residents in the country.

I call on the Macedonian people to enroll their data in the census in large numbers. Do not trust the anational structures who call for boycotts and damage their state and their nation, as they did a number of times over the past three years. We have an opportunity to verify the accuracy of the census during the local elections, when more than 50 percent of the population will vote and leave their fingerprints, Mickoski said.