The recent televised debates between three of the red shirt leaders and a government team led by the Prime Minister have been widely hailed as a step forward in Thai political debate.

They may also lead to innovation in the world of Thai television. Parliamentary debates have of course long been televised, but, except for special occasions, are normally so boring that not even MPs turn up to watch. Or perform.

But many other aspects of politics take place away from the public gaze. And the attention of TV producers looking for a novel way of boosting their ratings has been attracted by the generally favourable reports on the debates. Some of them believe that there is an opportunity of applying the basic principles of reality TV to the political world.

Two negotiating teams sitting on opposite sides of a debating table will, no matter how important the discussion, soon pall. It must be remembered that the attention span of the average Thai TV viewer has been developed, over years of patient training, to expect ham acting, recycled plots, stereotyped characters and gaudy, overblown sets and costumes. Other ingredients of successful Thai TV, such as insufferably cute children, rude noises and ghosts in various stages of dismemberment, are thought to be inapplicable to politics. Political reality TV will require its own formats if it is to survive longer than its novelty value.

Prachatai has learned that a couple of pilot programmes have already been produced. These have shown some promise, but also with some problems already emerging. Politicians have initially been more than willing to appear, in the belief that this will enhance their reputation with viewer-voters.

In one pilot, three prospective candidates for the House of Representatives were each given coupons representing one million baht, which could be exchanged at the end of the series for prizes by the programme’s commercial sponsors. The contestants were told to treat this cash as a ‘donation from Party Headquarters’. They were taken to a typical upcountry constituency, each with a camera crew in tow, and told to buy as many votes as they could with their coupons.

Their efforts were reviewed on film by a panel of experts, comprising the 2009 Canvasser of the Year for the Northeast, a member of the National Election Commission, who advised on ways of circumventing the Election Law, and a soap opera actress whose job was to smile and wear a low-cut dress. The winner was determined by a special local ballot.

This pilot ran into problems when voters were reluctant to negotiate the sale of their votes in front of a camera, even when they were assured that this was entertainment rather than politics (many voters reportedly said they couldn’t tell the difference). One candidate solved the problem by using some of his coupons to bribe his camera crew to look the other way. The panel of experts thought that this showed excellent political acumen, but the producer wasn’t so happy with endless shots of village life while the real action went on out of camera shot.

There was also controversy about the eventual winner, who had not campaigned at all, and so received zero marks from the political experts, but who easily defeated the other two candidates at the poll. It was later discovered that he had spent his entire million on bribing the TV company employees responsible for counting the votes. By the rules of the competition, the TV company decided that it had no other choice than to declare him the winner, but fired the staff members involved.

In a second pilot, three well-respect political ‘fixers’, Banharn Silpa-acha, Sanan Kachornprasart and Sanoh Thienthong, were asked to demonstrate on camera how to form a coalition government. Political commentators believe that between them they have been involved in the formation of approximately 25 cabinets in recent politics.

At the start of the game, each player, representing a party leader, pulls the level on a modified fruit machine which gives each of them a certain number of MPs. The trio then set about parlaying the House votes under their control into cabinet seats.

In the pilot, it was perhaps unfortunate that the fruit machine gave each pol approximately the same size of faction. This led to extremely heated arguments about the allocation of the more important ministries (i.e. those with the largest budgets for discretionary spending). But these disputes paled into insignificance when it came to the question as to who was best qualified to be Prime Minister.

An inside source who has seen the unedited footage reports that he has rarely seen such riveting television. Unfortunately the personal invective and salty language were judged to be unsuitable for prime time TV. The participants also demanded that the master be erased (selected clips are readily available on YouTube).

The production team believes that further programmes will make excellent television. It will, however, be necessary to find new sponsors since in the melee, packets of soap powder, cartons of junk food and a few gallons of whitening cream had been flung around the stage.

About author: Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).