CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

ARAB NEWSPAPER SAYS MANMOHAN SINGH CUT HIMSELF A RIDICULOUS SIGHT OF HIMSELF BY SHOWING OFF TO SRILANKA

By Walter Jayawardhana

Arab News in an editorial comment said the recent advice of India to Sri Lanka to behave like a small power in front of it gave the Congress Party government a comical image of itself.
Writing an editorial comment in the leading newspaper, Arab News of Saudi Arabia M. J. Akbar said the recent advice of India that it was a “big power” and Sri Lanka should behave only like a “small power” in front of it could only used by a country when “power has gone to its head and affecting it with cerebral malaria.”

“However, despite being honed down a medium power the Congress still cannot quite get out of the big power mentality, whether in government or as a party,” the article bluntly pointed out.

The article further said, “We have just witnessed the faintly ridiculous sight of the Manmohan Singh government describing India as a big power, and dictating to Sri Lanka the policies it would prefer a “small power” to adopt. This is not the language of strength. It is the language a government uses when power has gone to its head, affecting it with cerebral malaria.”

The newspaper was commenting on the statement of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Security Advisor M. K. Narayan who said recently that Sri Lanka should come to India to buy weapons without going to China and Pakistan for the island nation’s needs. Aggravating the undiplomatic statement more, Narayan said it was India who should decide what weapons Sri Lanka should buy . According to him Sri Lanka should buy only defensive weapons against the country’s Tamil Tiger insurgency attempting to divide the country and not offensive weapons.

It was Narayan who headed an intelligence bureau when the Congress government headed by Indira Gandhi, the mother in law of Italian born Sonia Gandhi who heads the Indian Congress Party today, bankrolled, armed and trained the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to lead a separatist movement in Sri Lanka. Later the very terrorist movement the LTTE , which had been described as becoming a Frankenstein Monster, employed a woman suicide bomber to kill Indira’s eldest son Rajiv Gandhi, also a former Prime Minister of India. Later, a LTTE leader described their act as a monumental tragedy and staged a comeback in Tamil Nadu where the South Indian state of 60 million Tamils is run by a party sympathetic to the LTTE and coalesces with India’s Congress Party government at the Center.

Writing about the declining political fortunes of the Manmohan Singh government and the Congress Party Akbar further said, “In fact, this is the emerging scenario of the next few years. Power at the center will have little relation to power in the states. At one point, the Congress ruled 15 states while the NDA was in office at the center; within three years of reaching Delhi, the Congress has been reduced to Andhra, Assam, Haryana, Delhi and a bubble called Goa.

“There is one simple message: Big power politics is over in Indian democracy. Or, more accurately, it has been suspended until the small powers self-destruct, which may take a while. Decisions will have to be made through consultation and cooperation, rather than imposition.”

Disclaimer
All views and opinions presented in this article are solely those of the surfer and do not necessarily represent those of LankaWeb.com.

BACK TO LATEST NEWS

DISCLAIMER