Razak Chik

IT'S hardly time to campaign yet but the air is already blue with acrid smut with at least two politicians allegedly caught with their manhood up, unfortunately with their pants down.

They are among the first victims of the honey trap, duly getting caught in flagrante delicto and given the starring role as budding DVD porn stars! Welcome to the slimy world of political blackmail with the aid of the hidden camera!

Caught without so much as single stitch to hide their shame, the politicians can clearly be seen sitting by the side of some seedy motel bed, exposing more than just their infidelities. Worse; further misfortune was heaped with the unintended display of their paunchy pot belly to all and sundry. Please la, Datuk; renew your gym membership, can or not? Some of us find no joy in throwing up just as we get round to tucking in to our meal at the dinner table!

Before Awani or I get slapped with one of those multi-million ringgit defamatory suits, a disclaimer. My meanderings here should be consumed wholly in jest, and that means you’ll find not so much porn but all the intended pun fit for public airing, ya? So should the mere mention of the ‘p’ word – politics – be enough to grab your goatee, there’s always the EXIT key.

BACK TO THE BODOUIR
However odious they have been so far, the transgressors are not yet being hung, to be completely drawn and then bloodily quartered. Thankfully, their sexual (mis)adventures do not include any gory scenes of actual – if this were a game of gridiron American football - play action. We are therefore spared the tension associated with having to wait to see whether any of them ever achieve the pinnacle of power (the object of this elections), which is the reason they offer themselves as candidates in the first place. When one does this, one accepts that all kinds of dirty tricks will be perpetrated to expose them to public derision, widespread odium and unrelenting ridicule.

Unwittingly, we end up with more than just the indignity of the randy MP/PM-wannabes exposing their soiled and well-worn Pagoda brand underwear with the waistband having lost much of their youthful elasticity. The state of our politics has not progressed so far that we can all accept that “manusia bukan nabi” (men are not saints) mantra. Men have itchy urges under their loins (that’s me reworking – plagiarizing lah u - one memorable passage in James Clavell’s Shogun) simply waiting to erupt ala Vesuvius. They just lie dormant but bubbling to explode at the slightest pinch of the hair trigger.

The pleasures of the flesh after all, is as naturally aspirational as taking in oxygen. Even the Catholic church is in turmoil with cases of clergy having trouble coming to terms with their uncompromising stand on same-sex intimacy and the struggle to uphold their vows of monastic celibacy.

Our Buddhist friends up north also have to come to terms with their monks forever tapping into the world wide web and hanging on to mobile “smut” phones under their loose robes that; surprise surprise; are simcard-stacked with download after download of internet porn.

For the porn merchants however, I suggest they read what my colleague Suhaimi Sulaiman implored in his column posted on Sunday. He begged those with enough video editing skills but lacking moral compass to Raise The Bar (see Opinion – Election Campaigns - Raise the Bar Please by Suhaimi Sulaiman – www.astroawani.com). Basically, Cik Mie (as our much admired Managing Editor is reverentially addressed on the newsroom floor) wants campaign tacticians for PRU13 to raise the intellectual hotspot above the belly button!

BLACKMAIL ALERT!
To be sure, this is not, and will never be the last time sex is used as a tool for blackmail. There was this South East Asian military leader whose Russian handlers thought they could compromise. The randy general, instead turned the tables on the Soviets, daring them to expose his bedroom romps. “My people would actually applaud me for bedding a western white w****( there’s an ‘o’ in there somewhere),” he told them off.

The Mossad is also known for coercing their Arab foes into double dealing by this thoroughly non-kosher weapon, even in war. I have read enough books on the methods of the Mossad to know that the women combatants used as lure are also on national service and have no qualms shedding their army uniforms and lay down their M16s at the merest trigger of shalom from Netanyahu to get to work, even on the ShabbatI.



South American dictators of both stripes – Right Wing fascists as well as Left Wing Radicals make extensive use of so-called honey traps. The two politicians are in good company. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim had his video moments, as did MCA chieftain Dr Chua Soi Lek. Both took different tack in facing up to the threat to their political life posed by their enemies.

Anwar Ibrahim chose to fight the slander. Soi Lek made no attempt at denial. Big man that he is, Dr Chua came off none the worse for the experience. Perhaps his enemies underestimated how broad- minded and tolerant and forgiving party members when it comes to human frailties. One errant romp does not a sex maniac make!

Even for those who live in domestic harmony and have no need to wander and philander, keep your zippers locked as other dangers may still lurk.

These complex situations show the power of the hidden camera. Tell that to the chief minister of an Eastern Malaysian state known for his longevity or the well-connected `korek correct’ lawyer who were at the receiving end of the sting from the hidden camera.

Now, if this were the good `ol US of A, there’d be an outburst with plenty of puritanical hysteria. But one politician memorably raised his hands to admit adultery after being exposed in similar fashion but added in his defence – at least I was caught with a dead girl, not a live boy! His candidacy scored a home run simply because he was dredging the past misdemeanor of his opponent who liked entertaining total strangers from among the errand boys making a detour to his home on their paper route.

So if you feel especially vulnerable recognizing your inability to control your raging hormones, best invest in one of those inflatable dolls and pack it with you on your road trip!

After all, your mortal enemies will just be itching to hatch out a plot so you will do well to expect them to spring out from the nearest closet crying out in unison; “ Smile, you are on Candid Camera!”

RAZAK Chik has Singaporean friends who envy us the rough and tumble of Malaysian politics. Theirs is so soporifically sanitized that it could easily be packaged as a pill to rival the sedative effects of Valium.