Authorities attribute disruptions while analysts assess the potential for a complete shutdown on election day.
Social media disruptions in Pakistan have raised concerns over internet connectivity and access to information in the run-up to the country’s Feb. 8 election.
The government says recent outages were caused by technical glitches. But the timing has fueled speculation that the ruling establishment is throttling access to target the campaigning of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
This past Saturday, social media users across Pakistan experienced disruptions just as the PTI was holding a “virtual rally.” This was verified by Netblocks, an internet monitoring organization.
Netblocks said on the platform, “Confirmed: Live metrics show a nation-scale disruption to social media platforms across Pakistan, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. The incident comes as persecuted opposition leader Imran Khan’s political party, PTI, launches its second virtual gathering.”
On Jan. 7, a similar nationwide disruption occurred while the PTI was holding a virtual fundraiser.
Khan was ousted from power in a no-confidence vote in April 2022 and has been jailed since August over a range of corruption allegations, all of which he denies. His PTI has been under heavy pressure from the powerful military establishment since its supporters attacked army installations in May, when Khan was initially arrested.
Earlier this month, the party was stripped of its trademark cricket bat symbol — a nod to Khan’s storied career on the pitch — in effect forcing its candidates to run independently. Most experts believe the establishment now favors the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who returned from exile late last year and has had his image rehabilitated.
Sabookh Syed, political analyst in Islamabad, told Nikkei Asia that social media is the last bastion for Khan’s party. “There is no coverage of PTI on TV media and hence they are left with social media to spread their political message,” he said, suggesting the establishment and caretaker administration want to deny the PTI any benefits from online campaigning.
Facing criticism over the outages, however, the government sought to explain the problems.
Interim Information Minister Murtaza Solangi told reporters on Monday that the interruptions were caused by technical issues, stressing there is “no guarantee that such incidents would not occur in the future.”
At the same news conference, an official from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said citizens should expect more such glitches “for the next two to three months.”
Syed believes the apparent internet clampdown may only fuel public support for the PTI, still generally considered the country’s most popular party. “Disruptions of social media give a message that there is even no space for PTI in the digital sphere,” rallying citizens behind the party, he argued.
During the PTI’s online events, many citizens reportedly used virtual private networks to circumvent the restrictions. As election tensions build, some pundits have voiced concerns that the government may go even further — completely shutting down the internet shortly before the polls and only restoring access when the results have been announced.
Syed — who is also president of the Digital Media Alliance of Pakistan, an association of independent online journalism platforms — believes that it is highly likely that internet access will be fully suspended on election day. “Since PTI’s entire political campaigning is based on use of social media … an internet outage will mostly likely be designed to target PTI,” he said.
Others are not convinced that an internet blackout is imminent.
Nighat Dad, executive director of the Digital Rights Foundation, is doubtful. “There can be some targeted disruptions, but completely blocking the internet will result in a severe backlash against the government,” she said.
Arzak Khan, an internet governance expert in Quetta, also thinks the odds of a blanket shutdown before or during election day are low, as this would affect many critical infrastructure systems. He said there is a possibility of the government using “targeted internet shutdowns in specific areas and regions owing to security concerns, but they are more difficult to detect and identify.”
He warned that choking access to the internet affects the free flow of information, opinions and expression — all necessary to build public trust and facilitate free and fair elections. This would “threaten the legitimacy of the electoral process,” he said.
Lost in the debate over the fate of online access is Pakistan’s struggling economy. In the modern digital world, restricting the internet comes with huge costs that the South Asian nation can ill afford.
“According to recent research findings, a 24-hour suspension of internet services leads to a substantial financial setback of 1.3 billion rupees ($4.7 million), equivalent to a remarkable 0.57% of the nation’s daily GDP average,” Khan said. “As the digital economy expands, it will become even more expensive for nations to shut down the internet or bear the consequences.”
Dad, from the Digital Rights Foundation, argued that anyone considering an internet cutoff should abandon the idea before it is too late. “The disruption of social media and internet is a misdirected step by the government,” she said. “It’s against the constitution [and] court orders, and therefore it must be avoided at all costs.”
