When several Umno leaders urged National Mosque's ex-chief imam Taib Azamudden Md Taib to disclose the big secret which could supposedly exonerate Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, they got instead a revelation they neither bargained for nor expected.

This trend of sex becoming increasingly more pervasive in the political discursive space represents a paradigm shift.

We all know that character of public officials and politicians is important. But character as measured by one's private sexual life or conduct publicly exposed is a disconcertingly recent trend. The traditional dichotomy between a public service record and private life is no more honoured now as much as in the past possibly due to two developments.

The first was the prosecution of ex-deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim for sodomy, which focused on private sexual morality or lack thereof as the key criterion for entitlement to inherit or disqualify for high public office respectively.

The second — a by-product of the first — was the resurgence of PAS whose Islamic credentials Umno has sought to rival, and in that process unwittingly got drawn into its rules and polemics stressing on strict private morality and conduct as a benchmark for public office.

These two developments opened the Pandora's box from which has sprung our own homegrown version of sexual McCarthyism or witchhunt.

Like a toothpaste, once squeezed from the tube, cannot be put back in, so it happened in Anwar's prosecution — once private sexual immorality had been invoked as a bar against high office, it sets in motion a trend, tone and direction based on that benchmark.

Cases in point are the allegations of lesbianism made against Puteri Umno chief by Khalid Jafri and now the ex-iman's revelations of sexual improprieties by certain Umno leaders with underaged girls.

Never mind that the former imam should not disclose privileged confidences confided in trust by those government officials. His exposé has become ammunition for the party's political foes to "judge, punish, investigate or condemn" the leaders.

These political foes could — but need not necessarily — be from PAS. They may even hark from within the ranks of Umno in the struggle for positions and power.

It shows how far the rules of political contestation have of late been reconfigured on the 'axis' of sex by the aforesaid developments. There is now the additional requirement for public officials to uphold chaste private lives and a clean record of private morality.

Anything less spotless will be seized upon as fair game by one's political opponents within or outside the party. The demarcation between public and private realms is simply no more.

In seeking to compete with PAS on Islamisation, Umno leaders are inevitably drawn to engage in its polemics of strict and austere sexual morality, a terrain that they have no advantage over their rivals.

While Umno's leaders endeavour to show greater competence than PAS in the field of economic development, their rivals however would endeavour to show greater moral rectitude in their personal conduct and private lives as the basis of claim to high office.

It is ironical then that Umno's leaders have helped forged the very rules of political engagement and contestation focusing on private sexual morality over which their rivals appear to have the greater advantage.