The upcoming parliamentary elections can hardly be legal due to the fact that new identity cards of Montenegrin citizens are not biometric, which is a requirement under the Law on Election of Councilors and MPs in order to identify a voter using electronic devices for identification of voters.
During last week’s visit of experts from the French company Safran, which delivered the AFIS system to the Ministry of Interior, it was finally confirmed that the current new identity cards of Montenegrin citizens are not biometric, because they do not contain any biometric components – i.e. a chip with biometric data. Namely, according to generally accepted definitions that are accessible to all citizens, a biometric identity document is a document that contains a chip, in the electronic form, with some of the biometric data – face photo, fingerprint or even iris scan.
Encoding electronic biometric data on a person’s ID card is used primarily as a protection against the forgery of the document. Biometric data of citizens are taken over by the competent authorities through using appropriate, advanced technique, storing them in their own systems and encoding them on chips of ID documents, which significantly reduces the possibility of forgery.
Individual claims that the so-called MRZ code, which is embedded in the ID card, is a biometric information is incorrect and represents an ignorance of the matter. Actually, the MRZ code is a machine-readable code, the primary function of which is to enable fast passport processing at airports and border crossings with a large circulation of passengers, and to reduce the possibility of human mistakes while inputting the data from the document, which had been done manually before biometric data appeared. Therefore, the MRZ code does not contain a single piece of biometric information – electronic photograph of fingerprint, so scanning the MRZ code does not reveal any biometric data.
The confirmation that the new Montenegrin ID cards are not biometric is a reason to doubt the legitimacy of the upcoming parliamentary elections, not only because of potential forgery of ID cards, but also because of the fact that the majority of citizens who have the new ID card but not the new passport, according to the law, are not allowed to vote.
Although none of the former ministers of interior, from 2007, when the new ID cards were introduced, until today, has challenged the fact that the document does not contain biometric data, the fact is that the MoI has all along cheated and misled Montenegrin citizens and the whole public by claiming that the ID cards were biometric. It is sufficient to take a look at all the MoI’s acts from that time until now – from promotional brochures used to present the new ID cards to citizens to various acts of law – and see that the MoI has insisted on the falsehood that Montenegrin citizens have biometric ID cards.
Due to this long-term falsity of the MoI, the Parliament of Montenegro, by adopting amendments of the Law on Election of Councilors and MPs, has defined that the citizens must be identified by the new ID card or passport when voting.
According to the Law on Election of Councilors and MPs, article 80, the voter „proves his/her identity by presenting the biometric ID card or passport.“ The same article further lays down that „the voter cannot vote without having proved his/her identity.“ Therefore, a voter cannot be identified by presenting the new ID card, as it is not a biometric document, which makes room for forgery of ID cards.
To conclude, Montenegrin ID card does not contain any chip whatsoever and therefore cannot embed any biometric data, which is why it cannot be considered a biometric document. For the citizens to understand better – our ID cards are simple plastic cards containing no advanced electronic mechanisms to protect from forgery.
Actually, the possibility of forgery of the new non-biometric ID cards is the key problem here. Namely, such simple plastic cards are lot easier to forge than biometric ones. When combined with irregular and imprecise electoral registers, it makes huge space to manipulate with citizens’ free will and the result of the forthcoming parliamentary elections. If ID cards are easy to forge, and we have seen that they are, it is very possible that a large number of phantom voters, double voters and those who intend to replace dead voters will appear at the upcoming elections and thus illegally influence the results.
Vuk Maras
Monitoring Program Director
