The video presentation tending to implicate the leader of the opposition appears to be a direct retaliation for the recent Altantuya road-show.

The distinction between the two is that in one, there was no victim who suffered any injury, whilst in the other, a woman was murdered (whose murder has been established according to law) and many think a cover-up was contrived to protect the possible parties involved (which contrivance necessitated all the apparatus of high government and executive power).

Throughout the Altantuya affair, right down to Sodomy Episodes I and II, now this video presentation - there runs a common machination. The apparatus of government seems somewhat at play.

Even in its ‘un-involvement' there is an insidious involvement. Laws have certainly been breached in the possession and screening of the video to an audience, and yet the reels have been allowed, if not sanctioned, to run by under the very nose of the police and the government - and at our Carcosa Seri Negara.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. In the aftermath of the video presentation, the prime minister was seen and heard (as reported) defending the home minister and the police, vindicating them from any scheme and even suggesting that the performer in the video owns up.

Can the prime minister, his government and his police be exonerated for allowing the show to go on until completion?

One can smile and smile and be a vituperative villain. But beneath the seeming reticence of a classy statesman, there lives a little, vindictive child.

There comes a certain point, within Malaysian realities, when the sexual health of the opposition leader assumes relatively diminished relevance in the wider context of our yearning for a government that does not engender corruption, mismanagement, abuse of power, racial disintegration and religious animosity.

This video presentation, if anything at all, has fortified our resolve and intensified our desire for an alternative to the present government, whether in the Peninsular or in Sabah and Sarawak.

Legal implications

It should be pointed out that the possession and/or screening of the video recording could come within the ambit of s. 5(1) Film Censorship Act 2002 read together with s. 3 thereof.

Section 5 - Obscene Film

(1) No person shall

(a) have or cause himself to have in his possession, custody, control or ownership; or

(b) circulate, exhibit, distribute, display, manufacture, produce, sell or hire,

any film or film-publicity material which is obscene or is otherwise against public decency.

Section 3 - Interpretation

‘Film' includes the original or duplicate of the whole or any part of

(a) a cinematograph film; and

(b) a videotape, diskette, laser disc, compact disc, hard disc and other record,

of a sequence of visual images, being a record capable of being used as a means of showing that sequence as a moving picture, whether or not accompanied by sound.

The exclusion in s. 2(2)(d) does not apply as the video recording shown was, presumably, one that was ‘obscene or lewd'.

Apart from s. 5(1) Film Censorship Act 2002, there is also s. 24(1) Cinematograph Films (Censorship) Act 1952 which prohibits the ‘possession of any obscene or lewd film' - provided the video recording amounted to a ‘cinematograph film' as defined in s. 2 thereof. It is, however, uncertain if s. 292 Penal Code - which prohibits the sale and/or possession of obscene books or objects - covers the said video recording.]