Following a series of very public and very ugly revelations of misdemeanours at very high places in Malaysian national life, the year 2007 had ended on an uncertain note for the ruling BN with a series of dramatic public demonstrations.

If the prime minister has had any inkling of holding the much anticipated general election in the early part of 2008, the new year would have required him to implement a series of damage-control measures to recreate again the kind of feel-good aura that had won him such overwhelming support in the last general election.

Unfortunately for the BN, the entire government was given a painful slap in the face with the expose of a sex scandal in which a cabinet minister was forced to resign from all political offices.

The prompt resignation of Chua Soi Lek from all government and party positions has since won praise even among opposition parties and NGOs that are usually critical of BN politicians.

They deem the resignation as an honourable act on his part, taking responsibility for his indiscretion.

The whole incident, in which the former health minister and vice president of the MCA being caught on tape in the most compromising positions with a woman not his wife, must have become the hottest topic of coffee shop conversations all over the land, especially among the Chinese.

An American president might have been caught with his pants down but he did not have to resign from the revered office, but in Malaysia, the general pathos is still conservative on matters of personal morality – at least in public and on the surface.

Important political leaders are people given a great deal of high regard, and they are supposed to be ascetic saintly figures.

Peeping-tom syndrome

There is a touch of hypocrisy in this high expectation of moral standard on the part of political leaders though.

Chua certainly is not the first public figure to have been caught in this repulsive manner, and he probably would not be the last.

They say power is a sort of powerful aphrodisiac, and people in high places are human after all, easily subject to the temptation of the flesh and addicted to the need for love – especially when they work within the pressure cooker of the political arena.

The way that the public has been tantalised by the media coverage has also indicated the peeping-tom syndrome among many newspaper readers.

Apparently, there is a great deal of speculation as to the identity of the former minister’s lady companion, the location of the hotel, the availability of the very revealing DVD, and such saucy titbits that make for very steamy gossip!

I actually feel a great deal of sympathy for Chua, though I do not know him personally. The cruel and dramatic end of his career is not my concern. Politicians come and go, and nobody is indispensable.

But I do feel sorry for his innocent spouse and his family members, for the shame and pain that they are compelled to suffer during this traumatic time.

Members of the public and the police are now raising their arms in protest at how personal privacy can be so brutally invaded. I seriously doubt if they will ever catch the culprit.

The whole clandestine operation of installing the camera and distributing the subsequent DVD through the towns in Johor must have been a well planned sting.

When people have evil intention and passionate intensity, it is not easy to catch them at their dastardly act.

Leading back to MCA

Of course Chua has established a sort of precedent in our Malaysian political culture. He has resigned his positions promptly rather than going into denial with bullet proof skin as many other political leaders have done when faced with accusations of grave misconduct.

What is tragic is that he has fallen over personal indiscretion, when so many others have insisted on staying in office when accused of or even investigated for corruption, abuse of power, or sheer incompetence.

But what concerns me the most is the moral impoverishment of our culture of party politics.

In his many public statements after the event, Chua has not once accused the opposition for his painful demise. By now the various accounts and speculations on who-done-it have followed the trails of his fall from grace to the internal factional fight within the MCA.

For a while now, the Chinese newspapers have been rumbling with this rising star, from his relatively humble standing as a regional/local leader in MCA in Johor, to be elevated to national vice president and federal cabinet minister.

This elevation had given Chua the national exposure he needed, to project himself as a straight-talking, charismatic, and competent cabinet minister, as well as the chance to travel freely at government expense to meet his MCA grass-root leaders all over the country while he toured hospitals under his jurisdiction.

Those journalists and commentators who followed Chua’s political career in the last three or four years note how his influence had expanded to bloating point, and how he could easily challenge Chan Kwan Choy for the post of deputy president in MCA.

They see Chua as a very natural successor to the incumbent, Ong Ka Ting.

In contrast to Chua, Ong has maintained his blasé dull down-beat school-masterish persona all through his forgettable tenure as party president.

It is public knowledge that Chua has more than once out-shone Ong in public, and that the two MCA top leaders are not the best of friends.

Chua’s meteoric rise to public prominence in the party and in national politics must have stirred up a great groundswell of suspicion, envy, and fear among his adversaries

Winning is everything

It is now a matter of historical fact that the MCA – or any political party for that matter – has always been riddled with extremely acrimonious internal strife since its inception before our country’s independence.

Competition for the top job before, during, and after party elections have often been marked by very ugly campaigns that have divided or weakened the party to the detriment of their success at the poll during general elections.

Party members and leaders who are supposed to be comrades at arms would often go at each other with smear campaigns and personal attack which they will not do even to political foes on the opposition side. Winning is everything, at all costs, and ethics be damned.

Chua Soi Lek is just the latest victim of this brand of political culture, but the real victim of this latest fiasco is the development of healthy political culture in Malaysia.

The real victims are the people of Malaysia, who deserve better political parties, with better political leaders and members, who will observe some unwritten rules of gentlemanly political conduct.

If there is honour even among thieves, what more to say about politicians who are given the responsibility of running our country!

I was involved in opposition politics on the frontline for two decades. During one election in Kuching, I was given secret but reliable information about a distinguished candidate from the BN.

I was pressured by my members to make maximum use of this very tantalising bit of information.

I agreed and I lost

On nomination day and at the nomination centre, this BN candidate walked across the room to meet me. He smiled sheepishly and enquired if a certain personal matter could be left out of the election campaign.

I agreed, and we shook hands on the deal on the spot. Elections should be about national policies, and not about the bedroom of the people and their leaders. I lost, but it did not matter.

There are more important things than winning a seat during any general election. But I am sure I am a minority to think this way in Malaysia.

That is why I find this practice of bringing down a political leader through underhanded and clandestine strategy of exposing his sexual misconduct so repulsive, though nobody should condone such behaviour.

Whoever has done it to Chua has done a great disservice to all Malaysians. This is a principle that should apply to all political parties. If you have an internal fight, try to observe some rules of human decency, and debate on policies and platforms instead.

If political parties and political personalities continue to go for their opponents’ testicles in the public domain, then they will continue to enjoy the kind of low-esteem that citizens are giving them.

The result is public apathy in affairs of state, and a pervasive cynicism about the possibility high ethical standards at very high places.