Ruling Party Reluctant over Biometric IDs in Election
Civil Georgia, Tbilisi / 9 Feb.'11 / 23:44

A senior ruling party lawmaker, Pavle Kublashvili, said after a meeting of inter-party working group on election system reform, that use of biometric identification system on the election day was fraught with problems.

Introduction of biometric technologies to identify voters on the election day so that to prevent any individual from multiple voting is part of a joint proposal by eight opposition parties presented in October.

MP Pavle Kublashvili, who chairs the parliamentary committee for legal affairs and represents the ruling National Movement party in talks on election system reform, told journalists on February 9, that he was against use of this system on the election day.

"I think that use of this [biometric] IDs on the election day will create even more problems, so I can not share the opinion that these IDs should be used on the election day, but we will try to agree on some other alternative options," MP Kublashvili said.

Davit Usupashvili, the leader of Republican Party, said after the meeting of inter-party working group, that the authorities would start issuing biometric identity cards from June, but, as he said, the authorities were not sure whether it would be possible to issue these IDs to all the citizens by the next parliamentary elections in 2012. He said that the authorities also had doubts about the use of biometric IDs in elections. He also said it was agreed, that the ruling party would define its final position on the matter within a week and present its response at the next meeting.

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