In Pakistan, Senegal and Sudan, networks are down — and it’s no accident
Pakistani authorities shut down mobile phone services, including access to the internet, across most of the country just hours before polls were set to open for elections this week, in which hundreds of seats were being contested in the National Assembly. The mobile outage caused confusion among voters trying to find polling places and chaos for poll workers and election observers who would normally rely on mobile connections to coordinate their work.
But the shutdown came as no surprise — Pakistan’s election season has seen a smattering of network outages, most of them close in time to online events promoting the campaigns of parliamentary candidates for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or PTI, the party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Although he was not on the ballot, the election was seen as a proxy contest for Khan, who has been in jail since May and was recently dealt a combined sentence of 24 years behind bars after he was convicted on charges of corruption and leaking state secrets. Social media has been a cornerstone of campaign strategy for PTI candidates, who have robust support among younger voters.
In the lead-up to elections, anxiety that internet outages would occur led advocates to seek a court order prohibiting such a move — and this was granted two weeks back by the Sindh High Court. But after 30 people were killed on February 7, a day before the elections, in bombings targeting election offices in the Balochistan province, the Ministry of Interior demanded the network suspension, arguing that it would be necessary “to maintain the law and order situation.”
Candidates for PTI and other political parties were quick to cast doubt on the government’s justification for the shutdown. Jibran Nasir, an assembly candidate in Karachi and lawyer, lambasted the current caretaker government for the decision.