By Zubair Khan

During Pervez Musharraf period electronic media started enjoying freedom of expression. With passage of time it continued.Setting aside the state controlled TV stations all other channel these days seemed to be involved in various activities exposing those aspects which for years remained  no go areas of Pakistani society. Due to forthcoming elections now main focus of all the channels have been diverted to analyse various aspects covering various aspects of May-2013 elections.
In depth analysis of various programs telecast on the name of forthcoming elections unfortunately do not leave good taste in the mouth. Almost 90% such programs contain personality analysis as well weak areas of the political elite. In certain cases even very private affairs of the political elite has also been made public. Compared to pre-election media activities of various other democratic countries this trend of Pakistani electronic media at all is not encouraging. Normally   pre-election media activities make an effort to educate the people about the manifesto and programs of various parties thus enabling the masses to make up their minds to cast the votes. However here in Pakistan play of blame game, exposing weak points of various personalities and creation of hatred against each other have been taken as pivotal point of such programs. A TV channels on the topic such as vision for Pakistan made an attempt in this direction but deep analysis of the so for telecast  programs explicitly term it as failure.  Main reason is absence of main political leadership of the party. Further the moderators do not give any chance to guests to express their manifest or view point. After watching few of the the programs it looks as the programs have been produced more to highlight the moderators rather than political elite. Similarly absence of adequate knowledge on various issues as well bad mannerism of moderators have made the program more of a joke rather than of any benefit.

I would like to suggest that Pakistan Television which has relatively very large audience in Pakistan can take the responsibility of such program. Suggestion includes giving about 30 minutes to the political party head  to explain its visioned manifesto for next 5 years governance of the country. Basing on speech of the party leader a panel of at least three learned scholars can ask him/her few questions on the presented points. The panel to focus its questions only on the contents of the speech and on the issues and not personalities. Currently main political parties like PTI,PML (N), PPP, ANP, MQM and JUI (F) can be given such a chance.  In case authorities agree this list can further be increased depending on the party popularity amongst masses.

In case above suggestion is implemented it will definitely facilitate at least educated voters of the Pakistan to evaluate various manifestos of different parties, the way party leader has prioritized various issue and how he or she wants to handle various challenges being faced by the Pakistan.