His cheating on the wife – and (so the logic goes,if he could do that so he could cheat us in his official position) – is never really the real reason why many of us want Chua Soi Lek to resign. The fact that any public official is faithful to his spouse is no suggestion that he would not cheat the public coffers. It is just as consistent to argue that his doting on, and being faithful to the wife could also induce him to put his hand in the public till to enrich himself for his wife’s interest and security.

In Chua’s case, it would have made no difference if the wife and him have had a mutual private arrangement to overlook such extra-marital liaison; it would not have made a difference if Dr Chua were a widower or bachelor having consensual sex with another adult of the opposite sex in the hotel ; for all I know it would not have made a difference if he were caught on CCTV making love to no one but himself (as in masturbation), and he would be labeled an infantile deviant : people would still demand that he go!

The reason is because we cannot accept a public official holding high office to be compromised by shame. We ask how he would effective, conduct meetings with subordinates or colleagues who don’t respect him. Where there is public shame there can be no respect!

If truth be said, the shame is about sex being made public!

We are shamed of the sex act if it were publicized; we’re ashamed of our own bodies being filmed and circulated. We ask how can we respect a minister whom we have seen on tape naked and doing sex acts?

How can we evolve to First World Mentality when we cannot even accept something as natural as our own biological imperative – sex – which is responsible for the propagation of our species?

We use shame to substitute as reason and justice, reason in the sense that even if a public official were otherwise competent and honest in discharge of public office responsibilities, we impute otherwise of him because of overriding shame; justice in the sense that because of this shame we ignore justice and are prepared to reward and fulfill the objective of the below-the- belt perpetrators/blackmailers who used such dastardly tactics to drive from office their political opponent by hidden electronic surveillance.

Thereby we set in motion such a political culture where scandals based on personal sexual morality will become yardstick to kick out politicians – not their record of public service.

The fact is that, as Dr Chua said, we cannot arise above our hypocrisy. We can fornificate like rabbits in private and not seen, and that’s OK as long as it is not publicly known much more publicly viewed through DVD discs because of shame – ever since Adam & Eve were evicted from Garden of Eden whereupon they quickly took some fig leaves to conceal their natural body/private parts and had sex in the bush concealed from the view of the animals.

It is not a justification to concede that we’re hypocrites in many areas as Big Joe did and ask where was Chua, did he lift a finger, when these were going on.

The question is whether we ourselves are hypocrites when we are judging him, never mind he himself was one and never did anything to stop (say) the morality police hunting couples in public park.

I am more interested in us, whether we too have the mentality of the moral police going around to hound those caught in the act when what they do logically has not been proven to harm us collectively except exacerbate and reflect our shame of something natural that it is questionable whether we should be so ashamed of in the first place.

Whatever happens to these values of privacy, freedom of action for so long as no harm to others, honesty in admitting facts of life, resisting blackmailers etc – are they to be sacrificed because we are ashamed of the sex act especially when it is publicized and because we want to protect our own hypocrisy?

The fact is that we expect our leaders to be an embodiment of our collective hypocrisy and not to shame us on that (sex act) which we feel ashamed off if publicised although it has no logical nexus with his performance of public office!

This holier than thou attitude will only perpetuate our hypocrisy and diminish our voice to criticize the other hypocritical acts of our political leaders in their carrying out of public duties.