The VMRO-DPMNE group in Parliament submitted the initiative to gather signatures from citizens needed to nullify the census law.

We appeal to the Government to stop what it’s doing. All over Europe census procedures are postponed until 2022 due to the epidemic. We urge the Government to postpone our census for 2022, and to improve on the law. Under the current law we will do nothing more than confirm the already existing list of citizens of the Republic of Macedonia, said VMRO-DPMNE Secretary General Gjorgjija Sajkoski.

Under pressure from its ethnic Albanian partners, the ruling SDSM party agreed to adopt a law count all emigrants as residents. This will produce a list of citizens, which the country already has, instead of the more needed list of actual residents that can be used to plan infrastructure development and public healthcare needs.

We submitted 40 amendments to the Parliament meant to improve the text of the law, but they were all rejected, Sajkoski added.