Mai Kaung Saing — Candidates from the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) are having difficulty carrying out their election campaign in northern Shan State’s Mantong Township in the Palaung Self-Administered Zone after mobile phone lines went down, USDP candidate U Tun Aye said on October 16th. The specific reason for the reduced cellular coverage remains unclear.
The Ta’ang (Palaung) Nationalities Party and the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) are running for seats in the Upper House, Lower House, and State Parliament Constituencies 1 and 2.
The Lisu National Development Party (LSDP) is only contesting a seat in the State Parliament Constituency 1.
“The communications have been cut off so we don’t know in which villages battles are occurring. When we went to Manpat Village, a battle had taken place in the village in the morning. We arrived there in the evening to do a campaign rally. The phone lines didn’t work so we didn’t know a battle had broken out in the village. If we had known we wouldn’t have gone there for our security,” said U Tun Aye, a state parliament candidate running in Mantong’s Constituency No 1.
Mantong Township’s CDMA cellular tower is located in Manpat Village and a battle broke out between the Myanmar army and the Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) in this village on October 14th.
The local communication officer U Si Thu evacuated to Mantong due to security concerns, his departure may have affected local communications claimed, a local Mantong resident has claimed.
Although there are 158 villages in Mantong Township, the USDP can only campaign in a little more than 20 villages due to a lack of security, bad roads and the cellular network being down, says U Tun Aye.
“This area is unsafe and phone lines often keep going down so we are facing many difficulties. Some of the residents children are attending school in faraway areas and they were unable to contact them via phone so they are really feeling unhappy. They said battles have kept taking place every day, but we don’t know where they are happening as the phone lines are down,” he added.
GSM mobile phone lines went down after fighting resumed between the Burmese army and the Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) in September. Now, local residents are facing difficulties as the CDMA mobile phone lines went down ealier this month and they are still down as recently as October 16th.
