Last week I wrote about the election fever in Azad Kashmir. Now the election has come and gone. The situation was dangerously tense right to the last moment and there were reports of violence from various parts of Azad Kashmir, including Dadyal, the area I am most interested in. I have 2 observations about the elections, particularly as a British Kashmiri.
First, it is clear that there was great thirst for information among the British Kashmiri community about the results. DM Digital, a Manchester-based digital channel aimed at the Kashmiri/ Pakistani community tried to fill that gap by arranging a studio discussion and announcing the results as they came in. However, not everyone has access to digital satellite TV. It was poorly organised, with the result being announced only once. It would have been more informative if the results were repeated, perhaps on an onscreen table, every 10 minutes, for the benefit of people who had just tuned in.
Second, there is the phenomena of ‘citizen-reporters’. This was evident from the callers to the DM Digital discussion. People were calling in to say, for example, ‘I’ve just spoken to my nephew and he says candidate x has won’. In many cases the ‘citizen-reporters’ contradicted what was being announced by the channel. Again, this underlines the importance of clear, objective information. The callers were clearly supporters of particular candidates.
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