With reference to the ' All-out VCD swoop ' headline in the Star , make sure that the swoop does not descend to my house!

The greatest threat to the civil liberty of today's average Malaysian is the overzealous enforcement of sexual morality by public enforcement officials.

Admittedly there is some argument justifying the stemming of pornographic VCDs and materials distributed under the counter and in the public domains such as pasar malam (night markets), etc.

The 'harm' is in children, unable to handle such material, buying them. The harm could be in offending people with strong religious values or imbued with the notion of 'higher morality' and therefore accept such materials being purveyed in the public for profit. Hence the campaign is launched against manufacturers, dealers and vendors of pornographic material.

The proposal by the Home Ministry's central zone enforcement unit chief Mamat Ibrahim to raid private homes to search and seize pornographic VCDs crosses the line drawn at 'harm'.

The argument against such a proposal should not be merely based on practical grounds of whether enforcement agencies have the requisite manpower, lacking which will lead to mockery of the system or that it would be difficult to handle the other situation of pornography being viewed or downloaded from the Internet.

The argument should be better grounded on principles of which I can immediately think of a few here.

The first principle is that in spite of whatever reasons there are in pursuing porn from pasar malam to the homes, it cannot override the more important competing principle of the sanctity and privacy of home. I don't mean just homes of average Malaysians but some members of our upper echelon of society who stash huge sums of moneys in the sanctuary of their bungalows. Even they deserve privacy unless one could prior establish they have committed the public harm of corruption in the public domain, the fruits of which are hidden in the homes.

The second principle is the inalienable right to expression of the natural and basic sexual instinct, which provided that it does no harm to another person or persons (examples rape or public nudity or engaging in consensual sex in public) should not be violated or constrained.

The danger is that the mere holding of hands with one's girlfriend in a public park like what college student Lai Kar Leong had done , has now been labelled as "indecent behaviour" by the Ipoh City Council. In this instance it is just not a case of Lai's rights being violated.

The fact that enforcement officers viewed the holding of hands between members of opposite sex in public constituted indecent behaviour is a reflection of what is going on in the murkier recesses of their psyches, which presents a clear and present danger to the state of Malaysian liberty. If engaging in the most innocuous act of holding hands is deemed a sublimated sexual expression that cannot be done in public, what is an average Malaysian supposed to do to express his sexuality?

He used to have the option of retreating to the sanctuary of his home and to watch pornography, and maybe spice up his sex life with his partner or spouse by watching the pornographic disc. In that way, he offends no moralist in public but even this has now threatened to be an offence in which his home is no more sanctuary against a night raid in search of pornographic materials!

Whither Malaysian right to privacy and sanctuary of home? One can kiss it goodbye in the Malaysian Gulag in which enforcement of public morality has crossed the line to enforcement of private morality steamrolling over human rights, more specifically the right to privacy and the right to the natural biological instinct of sexual expression, even by way of fantasy without harm to any one!

The third principle that should be addressed is dispelling of the current obfuscation of what is really the true nature of morality that should be promoted and enforced in the Malaysian society.

The true moral value in people is not what is in their sexual psyches, which many, who supposedly enforce morality, keep in as shocking a state as their bureau, desk and bedroom drawers, but in how they treat one another with particular regard to ensure that the rights of others, especially the public, the people, the voters, the taxpayers, or sections thereof such as minority shareholders etc are respected and are not abused and put in harm's way by power or avarice.

In a word, the morality to observe the principle of fiduciary duty to do good, not to harm to the body of persons whose trust is placed on you, and to which you must account for your actions.

By this principle, an elected government is accountable to the people. Public officials elected because of the voters' trust should promote their constituencies' welfare rather than hypocritically use the elected position to make private gains and money out of awarding of contracts, granting of licences without transparency and governance in procedures, or to quell dissent by draconian laws and selective prosecution as well as persecution.

That is public sector. In the private sector, our corporate laws and regulations are about 97 percent tight to uphold accountability and transparency amongst directors who are in fiduciary positions in relation to the companies and their shareholders and amongst bankers who are fiduciaries for public funds.

And yet when one looks at the state of our corporate distress, corporate and bank failures, and shareholders who have lost investment and life's savings, one may legitimately ask, what is wrong?

Part of it is laxity and failure of enforcement. The other part is naivete of minority shareholders who just do not know that they have been taken for a ride by directors or substantial shareholders until it is too late.

The situation is parallel in the public domain in which the people or sections of people may be taken for a ride by the religious or racial rhetoric of leaders to distract them from the private gains that public positions offer at the expense of public coffers whether in relation to taxpayers money, EPF or unit trusts.

In conclusion, if morality is sought to be enforced, let it be that of the morality of the fiduciary that those powerful, educated and connected, whether in public or private sectors, discharge the trust reposed upon them by those, who are less educated, informed and sophisticated, over whom they have charge and in whose interest and benefit, those in fiduciary positions should advance and account to instead of their personal aggrandisement.

It is therefore not sexual morality that needs to be urgently enforced it is fiduciary morality of protecting the masses who are weak ignorant and vulnerable instead of making use and abusing them in full rigours in accordance to the immutable laws of the jungle.

We are after all a melting pot of different cultures and religions, and others sexual morality is not necessarily my morality and provided I do no harm by my immorality or amorality, I resent other people imposing and enforcing their morality on me, whether based on their religion or otherwise.