Malaysian minister quits
over sex videos
Ian MacKinnon
Wednesday January 2, 2008
Guardian Unlimited
 |  Chua Soi Lek. Photograph: Tengku Bahar/AFP-Getty |
Chua Soi Lek, 61, stepped down from all his public posts a day after conceding he was the man involved in various sexual acts in the DVDs, which were widely circulated in his home state of Johor.
Chua, a former doctor who is married with three children, initially refused to resign after saying he had apologised to the Malaysian prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, and his family.
But with a general election looming, he threw in the towel to spare the government further embarrassment and limit the political fallout in the conservative, predominantly Muslim country.
The minister, who came to prominence when Abdullah brought him into the cabinet in 2004, said he was relinquishing all posts, including his seat as an MP and the vice-presidency of the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), the second party in the ruling coalition.
In his second news conference on the subject in as many days, Chua bemoaned the fact that people "could not accept" his public apology. "Some Malaysians have a holier-than-thou attitude," he said.
The two DVDs - one 56 minutes long and the other 44 - began circulating late last week. Many were left in public places for people to take for viewing, with a copy finally passed to Chua by a friend on Sunday.
The Malaysian media eventually put the story on its front pages on Tuesday, forcing Chua to concede his role and reveal he had earlier apologised to the prime minister, as well as the deputy prime minister, Najib Razak, and the MCA president, Ong Ka Ting.
Chua said he had not made the video and did not know who was behind its distribution. The material was believed to have been recorded in a hotel room in southern Malaysia two years ago.
Chua had not filed a complaint with police but officers are investigating how four cameras were concealed in a hotel room, and warned that the penalty for possession or distribution of the DVD was three years' jail.
The disgraced minister is the most senior political caught in a sex scandal since the deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim was expelled from the ruling party in 1998 and jailed on a charge of sodomising his driver. The conviction was later overturned and Anwar has maintained it was a trumped-up charge to thwart him politically.
From The Guardian (UK)
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