Internet Shut Down on Pakistan's Election Day

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Facts

  • Internet data and call services were shut down in Pakistan 10 minutes before the polls opened for the general election, with the government calling the outages "security measures" due to recent "incidents of terrorism." While WiFi was reportedly still working, voters claimed they were unable to book taxis to go to the polling stations and couldn't coordinate travel to the ballot box with family members.1
  • Over 128M registered voters went out to vote for more than 5K candidates running for 336 seats. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan, whose PTI party won the last election before he was ousted two years ago, is ineligible to run after being convicted of corruption. The two leading candidates are now former three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (Nawaz party) and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari (PPP party).2
  • Members of Khan's PTI party also claimed the internet outage kept them from using their party's app designed to help them find their respective voting locations.3
  • The military also announced that there were 51 "cowardly attacks" across the country, resulting in 12 deaths, mostly security officials. The military also noted, however, that election day was "generally peaceful" due to the "deployment of [137K] army personnel and civil armed forces" across the 6K "most sensitive polling stations."4
  • According to one polling official, police also threatened to arrest PTI officials who established a booth near his voting station to provide information on candidates, as well as ordered him to block all photos of Khan at the booth. While Khan currently faces 34 years in prison, his rival, Sharif, was allowed to return to the country from exile to become the election's frontrunner.3
  • As of 11 p.m. local time, PPP candidate Asif Ali Zardari was winning with about 22.1K votes, with Sharif so far winning in the Lahore province with 12.3K votes. Several PTI-backed independent candidates were also winning in their respective districts as early counts were released.5

Sources: 1BBC News, 2Independent, 3The New York Times, 4Al Jazeera and 5The Express Tribune.

Narratives

  • Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by ABC News. It seems that former Prime Minister Sharif and his party are headed toward victory again — this time, to help fix the economic and terrorism challenges that have grown in the country since he left. While some have criticized the internet outage as a method of suppression, the bombings and shootings that occurred throughout election day have shown the necessity of measures to stop even worse attacks from hindering the people's ability to vote.
  • Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by The Intercept. The government hinted at shutting down the internet before the election, and today it did. If the fraudulent arrests, convictions, and intimidation of Khan and his party — the most popular candidates in the country — weren't enough to expose this illegitimate regime, then nothing will. The US State Department in 2022 urged Pakistan to remove Khan from office, and ever since, the military regime has used every tool it has to make sure of it.

Predictions