By Muheebwa Hillary in Kampala.
Kampala, Uganda. (News Of The South) – Social media platforms Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter have been shutdown across Uganda, as the country votes in the presidential and parliamentary elections. The platforms were shutdown on the voting day, Thursday 18th, and 24 hours later they are still down as counting of the votes continues. The mobile money service has also been affected.
A message from MTN Uganda, one of the service providers, to its subscribers on Thursday afternoon read, “The UCC has directed MTN to disable all social media & Mobile Money services due to a threat to Public Order & Safety.” UCC is the Uganda Communications Commission, a regulatory agency.
UCCs director of corporate affairs Fred Otunu told the Daily Monitor newspaper that the “temporary” shutdown of social media and the widely used Mobile Money network was for security concerns. The executive director Godfrey Mutabazi, told local TV stations that the shutdown was at the behest of the Electoral Commission.
However, sources within UCC intimated the Thursday morning shutdown came after the ruling NRM party made an alarm over a spate of negative messages, audio and video, against their candidate President Museveni.
Addressing the media after casting his vote at a polling station near his country home, President Museveni told journalists that social media is a “pathway of lies” and justified the shutdown as a “security measure to avert lies, intended to incite violence and illegal declaration of election results.”
“That must be steps taken for security to stop so many [social media users from] getting in trouble,” the president added.
In a statement issued by Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for East Africa, Sarah Jackson, “The Ugandan government’s decision to block access to social media on mobile phones on election day is a blatant violation of Ugandans’ fundamental rights to freedom of expression and to seek and receive information.”
Some Ugandans used VPNs, or virtual private networks, to bypass the blockages and tweet about the shutdown and the elections update.
The State of Internet Freedom in East Africa 2015, a survey on Access, Privacy and Security Online conducted by OpenNet Africa initiative, revealed that 11.9 million Ugandans access the internet daily. 62% of these internet users are mobile users who visit social media pages which include among other applications; Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp.
Eng Badru Kiggundu, chairman of the Electoral Commission, has told the candidates agents, party representatives, media and election observers at Namboole Stadium, the location of the official tally center, that a winner from the presidential elections will be announced on Saturday February 20th at 4pm.
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