Opposition’s push for biometrics could prevent people from voting – Jagdeo

General Secretary of the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) Bharrat Jagdeo has said that the Opposition’s push for a biometrics system during the upcoming elections is intended to prevent citizens from voting.

The Opposition-aligned commissioners on the seven-member Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) have been advocating for the implementation of biometric fingerprint identification for voting at the 2025 General and Regional Elections.

But the GECOM Chairperson Justice Claudette Singh recently rejected the proposal, citing several issues including limited time for implementation.

The Opposition has been critical of the GECOM Chairperson’s decision, noting that biometrics voting provides a crucial step toward mitigating electoral fraud by ensuring that each voter’s identity is verified before they cast their ballot.

Jagdeo told reporters during his press conference on Thursday that in the past, fingerprint biometrics were manually collected and that they were digitised and utilised to ensure there were no duplications on the voters’ list.

But he said when one keenly listens to Opposition GECOM Commissioner Vincent Alexander and other opposition members, “then you will realize that they want to use it (biometrics) for an unconstitutional purpose which is to prevent people from voting.”

“Say you show up at the polling place and you have a blackout…or there is some glitch in the system, then you lose your right to vote,” he explained, adding that this cannot be allowed to happen.

Jagdeo reminded that the only requirement to vote is being a Guyanese aged 18 and older.

He spoke of the 1997 elections and the controversy over the use of an identification card for voting.

Jagdeo explained that the opposition had agreed with the PPP to make an identification card a requirement to vote.

“Like in 1997, they agreed with it before the elections, we used the ID card to vote, people who didn’t have an ID card or document couldn’t vote and then just after they lost, they went and challenged it,” Jagdeo explained, noting that it was Justice Claudette Singh herself who ruled that the barring citizens from voting due to the absence of an identification card was unconstitutional.

He said the opposition wants to pull the same stunt again, this time, with fingerprint biometrics.

“The plot is clear,” Jagdeo said, adding that fingerprint biometrics can be used as one of the means for verification, “but you cannot use it as the final means.”

He also agreed with the GECOM Chair that there is not enough time to implement such a system for this year’s polls.