Seaga urges support for NIDS

AS DEBATE continues over the mandatory National Identification System (NIDS) recently passed into law, former prime minister Edward Seaga told Labourites that the opposition People’s National Party (PNP) is known for not supporting national fingerprint identification.

According to Seaga, in the 1960s when the Government, led by Sir Alexander Bustamante, sought to introduce a national identification system requiring the fingerprint of all voters, the PNP opposed it.

“The PNP told the people, ‘Don’t give any fingerprint. Don’t register’. And when we pulled up the registration list, it was 30,000 persons short,” said Seaga.

Seaga would later, along with the late Ryan Peralto, pilot fingerprint voter registration under the then Electoral Advisory Committee (EAC). This time, however, it had the backing of the opposition PNP as vote fraud reached intolerable levels in the 1990s.

Now used in several constituencies, electoral officials have technology for fingerprint identification to produce ballots.

According to Seaga, fingerprint is the way of the future.

“If you want to go to the bank in the future, is not the voters card they going to ask you for. It is the national identification card. And that is the one you going to have to have to change money, to get money, to the post office, to go to any government establishment,” said Seaga.