Elections “steal” the census term
Macedonia is out of luck when it comes to conducting a population census. It is either delayed or unsuccessful. On the other hand, the country is doing well when it comes to holding elections. It has them every single year. According to announcements, it will be so in 2020 as well, when the tenth parliamentary elections will take place, which “stole” the term of the census originally planned for April, 2020.
The fact that in less than 30 years of pluralism in the country, there have been ten election cycles for MPs and six presidential elections since 1994, plus seven local elections and another three referendum votes, speaks volumes about the electoral “invasion” of the electorate. On the other hand, the last census was conducted in 2002, after the security crisis in the country. The 2011 census attempt failed, and the next 2020 is unlikely to be the year of conducting census, although preparations for the statistical operation were in the meantime started in April, and even a trial census was conducted in several municipalities in the country.
The option of postponing the census for the following year, that is, for April 2021, which is also a census year in the EU Member States, is now at stake. The State Statistical Office announced that they would propose to the Ministry of Justice, as a proponent of the census law, that the operation be postponed until April 2021, and that the law on population, households and apartments census be adopted before the forming of technical government in January. Prime Minister Zaev also left that option open yesterday. Another option, according to him, is to hold the census next autumn, i.e. after the elections for new Members of Parliament.
Zaev indicated that the recommendations of the SSO would be respected. He expressed confidence that the law would be passed and that the assessment of the State Statistical Office would be final.
– Whether we have a census in 2020 or 2021, the law should and must be passed because the trial census has been successful and the state must have a census. I heard EU Ambassador Samuel Zbogar’s statement. He called for the law to be passed so that the census could be conducted next year or in 2021. You also know that the opposition was demanding the postponement of the census. Now that we have already consensually decided on holding early elections in April 2020, we are losing springtime for holding the census – said Zaev.
On the other hand, although the prime minister ruled out the possibility of postponing the April 12 elections a few days ago, if NATO membership procedures need to be completed, VMRO-DPMNE secretary general Igor Janushev has come out with the stance that the opposition will not accept any prolongation of the election term. VMRO-DPMNE says that any delay in the ratification of NATO protocols will not be an obstacle to electoral confrontation. According to the explanation, even if Parliament dissolves in the meantime, the constitution provides for the possibility of calling it an emergency, which was also discussed at the last leaders’ meeting.
At the meeting there were experts, professors from the Faculty of Law, who confirmed the same, since in 2016 we had such practice and the Constitutional Court made a decision that in case of urgent, crucial and certain situations it is permissible for the Parliament to be called and make a decision – Janushev said, despite DUI official Artan Grubi’s statement that the leaders had agreed that if NATO membership procedures were not completed by February, the elections would be postponed.
Zaev yesterday rejected the possibility of postponing the elections. He explained that he expected the procedure for full ratification of the NATO Protocol to be completed 45 days before the election at the latest. Therefore, according to Zaev, it would be best to dissolve the Parliament 45 days before the voting day, as soon as possible, in accordance with the terms for conducting the election activities. In this case, that would mean the end of February. Otherwise, the starting date for the dissolution of Parliament is 60 days before the elections, which would mean around February 10th.
“The protocol, once ratified by all NATO member states, should arrive to our Parliament, where MPs will also ratify it, thus formalizing the country’s membership in the North Atlantic Alliance”, Zaev explained.
He added that it should be borne in mind that Spain is holding elections on November 10, leaving us to complete the December, January and February NATO membership procedure, with three more ratifications pending – in France, the Netherlands, and Spain. The French Senate has adopted the first reading of the draft law on ratification of Macedonia’s NATO Accession Protocol. The document remains to be ratified by the National Assembly in the second reading.
Regardless of the calculations developed in the past few days for a possible postponement of election deadlines, next year would have been a year of election anyway. It was only a question of whether these elections, for the first time since 2008, would be regular or early. The answer came after the French “no” in Brussels for opening North Macedonia’s EU negotiations. Immediately afterwards, Zaev announced “snap elections”, during a leaders’’ meeting with President Stevo Pendarovski, with a proposal for scheduling them in late December. But VMRO-DPMNE’s insistence on complying with the 100-day deadline for forming a technical government “postponed” the elections for April 12 elections 2020. Accordingly, in the period between the two rounds of elections for Members of Parliament – the last and the next, three more elections were held in the country, i.e. not one year has passed without voting. The last parliamentary elections were held in December 2016, there were local elections in October 2017, and the referendum on the name was held in September 2018. In April and May 2019, both rounds of the new presidential elections were held, so the “break” between that one and the vote in April 2020 would be barely a year.
Aleksandra M. Mitevska