Pakistani Reality Show Stages Own Elections

Fed up with rigged elections and flawed politicians, a Pakistani television channel has come up with an alternative way to select a new prime minister: a reality TV show.

Dawn News will start auditioning today for the new show, Enter the PM, which threatens to undermine President Musharrafs efforts to stage-manage parliamentary elections on January 8.

With Pakistan now in its fifth week of emergency rule, the 24-hour English-language news channel has been publishing advertisements calling for nominations for the show. “Wanted: a perfect Prime Minister for Pakistan”, the advertisement says. “When democracy is threatened, the media has a reasonable right to intervene.”

The channel, which can be seen by Pakistans 20 to 30 million cable and satellite subscribers, plans to begin screening the show on December 27 and to broadcast the final two days before the elections.

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It may sound like satire but the show is a serious attempt to give Dawn News viewers — mostly from the English-speaking elite and middle classes — a rare chance to express their political preferences freely.

Dawn News was one of more than a dozen private television channels that were taken off the air when the emergency began on November 3, and resumed broadcasting two weeks ago.

Mr Musharraf, who began a new five-year term last Friday after stepping down as army chief, has promised to lift the emergency on December 16 and to hold free and fair elections.

Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the main opposition leaders, fear that he will rig the polls and say that they will boycott them unless he meets a list of their demands. Many Pakistanis say that they are equally distrustful of Miss Bhutto and Mr Sharif, who have each served two unsuccessful terms as Prime Minister and spent most of the past eight years in exile.

Against this backdrop, Dawn News came up with its own way to gauge public opinion and raise the profile of alternative candidates before the polls.

“Its a game, but a serious game,” Azhar Abbas, the channels director of news, said. “The idea is to create a debate on some of the pressing issues that Pakistan is facing.” The channel began publishing advertisements this week asking anyone who was eligible to vote in the election to propose a candidate for prime minister.

Nusrat Amin, the producer of the show, said that 200 candidates had been shortlisted for auditions in the main cities of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. “Most are ordinary citizens, people from the business sector or the media, but there are also political figures,” he said.

The politicians included members of Miss Bhuttos Pakistan Peoples Party and Mr Sharifs Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) party, he said. Spokesmen for the parties were unable to confirm that they were taking part. The nominees also included Iftikhar Chaudhry, who was sacked by Mr Musharraf as Chief Justice and remains under house arrest.

The channel will select 16 for the first televised round, in which they will be quizzed by three journalists and a panel of seven judges. The top four will then be chosen by viewers, the judges and 50 “electors” handpicked by the editors of the Dawn Group, which includes the popular English-language daily newspaper Dawn.

However, viewers will not select the two finalists or the winner, who will be chosen only by the “electors”.

Producers said that the process was designed to prevent manipulation of text voting and to reflect the Pakistani political system, in which Parliament elects the prime minister.

And the prize? “Two tickets to Washington,” Mr Abbas joked.

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