All it takes to get the country’s hormone levels up a notch is one blogger backed by a few sordid politicians and fewer still behind-the-scenes movers and shakers frantically clicking away on their laptops and raising hell about an alleged sex scandal. I say ‘alleged sex scandal’, because that’s all it needs to be, irrespective of whether it happened or not and whether it was a wardrobe malfunction or a blooper of Nixonian proportions.

The reason is very simple, anything sexual throws people into basic-instinct mode: they can relate to it. Some do because, no matter what kind of fuss they make about it, no matter how horrified and in awe they seem to be when they hear details of sexual bravado or secret sexual encounters, they’ve probably been there and done that and secretly thank whatever god they believe in that they didn’t get caught. Others relate to it because they understand that nothing cries ‘human’ like ‘sex’. It’s our reason for being in this blessed world in the first place and some surely think it would be a great way out of it too.

So it is hardly rocket science to understand that, if one needs to get attention, for whatever reason, be it as a way of spiking rates of clicks per page on a blog or improving viewing rates to deviating attention from a major event that puts the current administration in a good light, there is nothing that works better than an alleged steamy spa experience of a minister when abroad on government work.

Yes, it works. It gets people talking, and like any mud-slinging exercise that thrives on gossip, it takes like wildfire and fuels people’s imaginations.

It gets the desired effect of anticipation for more juicy details, factual or conjectured, and the public has one more thing to talk about over coffee or a beer and something new to joke about when engaging in sexually nuanced doublespeak.

Is this right? Should the private lives of politicians, and by private here I mean sexual, be made public?

Laws should also be enacted to safeguard politicians from uncalled for intrusions into their private and sexual lives

Is it in the public interest what Kama Sutra positions our ministers are capable of contorting into and whom they decide to indulge with in tantric pleasures?

Should people demand to know or expect, at least, to be told the details of their politicians’ private lives, or should, on the other hand, the politician demand more protection from the public knowing his private business?

I believe the way to go about it is to see what is in the public interest and what one is safeguarding when protecting that interest. First of all, it is imperative to realise that there is a clear demarcation line between what is in the public interest and what the public is merely interested in.

‘Public interest’ is the general welfare of the public, plain and simple. Private morality and private eccentric behaviour has no automatic bearing on someone’s ability to hold office and make of that office a specimen of efficiency and successful practice. Many past politicians who achieved much for their countries and the world would not have been capable of holding office if one had subjected their intimate lives to the scrutiny politicians are subjected to today.

We are all but human; we go through life making mistakes and, hopefully, learning from them as we go along. We are not perfect, none of us, politicians or otherwise. We have pasts and we have histories, marriages that went wrong, messy love stories, feelings we shouldn’t have but can’t control. We’re humans, we’re not machines, none of us have spotless private lives, and no future person, politician or otherwise, will either.

And if we keep this up – this constant breathing down politicians’ necks when it comes to private life – no one will be interested in giving their services to their country. The country will lose great talent simply because it is embodied in a human being. Politicians should be judged by their results, their achievements, their talent and their enthusiasm to serve when others sit, watch, criticise, assess and scrutinise comfortably from their living room chairs.

There are instances when private life becomes, exceptionally, of public interest. That must be admitted. When something done in private is diametrically opposed to something one has elevated to an electoral promise, for instance, or when one has used their private life as a campaign method, thus giving rise to expectations of constancy.

The public is justified in giving a hoot if a politician proposes or supports laws that restrict or interfere with the private sexual lives of the public. The public is expected to have a you-mess-with-mine-I’ll-mess-with-yours attitude in such cases. For instance, while the fact, on its own, of a politician having a gay sexual encounter with another consenting adult is not remotely in the public interest, the same fact would understandably be so if that very same politician manifestly campaigned against gay rights or, indeed, voted against them. However, these exceptions should be few and far between and all to be seen to on their own merits.

The time is ripe for this country to enter into a serious discussion about this matter. Laws should also be enacted to safeguard politicians from uncalled for intrusions into their private and sexual lives. Much of what is written about politicians is meant to catch the attention of the masses or provide for their distraction from important issues, providing fodder for the eight o’clock news. But there’s much at stake, and realising it quickly and doing something about it is very much in the public interest.

Deborah Schembri is Parliamentary Secretary for Planning and Simplification of Administrative Processes.