The multi-ethnic governing coalition said in a statement late on Wednesday it had decided to end the census, which began on Oct. 1, after the commission in charge resigned on Monday saying the results would not be reliable.
Macedonia’s population breakdown is key to its delicate power-sharing system under a deal to end fighting in 2001 between government forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas seeking greater rights for the Albanian minority.
The statement gave no indication if or when the government planned to relaunch the census.
The last census in 2002 put the ethnic Albanian minority at 25 percent. But Macedonia’s Albanians say they are more, and a row erupted over whether or not to count people absent from the former Yugoslav republic for over a year.
Ethnic Albanians argued that in not doing so, the authorities were seeking to lower their official percentage because of the number of Albanians working abroad.
Census officials in different regions were conducting the count according to different interpretations of the rules, media reports said.
The European Union, which Macedonia wants to join, has pressed for an accurate picture of the country’s population.
“The deep distrust between Macedonians and Albanians was reflected on the ground,” a Western diplomat, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. “It’s obvious the institutions do not carry the weight for such a complex operation.”
Western diplomacy staved off civil war in 2001, using the lure of NATO and EU integration to squeeze greater minority rights from the government and get the guerrillas to disarm and enter politics.
But progress on ethnic relations has been patchy. The country is still largely poor, unstable and hamstrung in its progress toward NATO and the EU by a two-decade dispute with Greece over Macedonia’s name.
Parliament should vote on the government’s decision to end the census later on Thursday, but this is seen as a formality since the governing coalition controls a stable majority.
