Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor ridiculed the Central government for calling Singapore High Commission over its Prime Minister’s remarks on India.
He said that rather than pulling up envoys of a friendly country, the government “must learn to be less thin-skinned”.
Taking to his official Twitter handle, Tharoor said, “Most unseemly for MEA to summon the HC of a friendly country like Singapore over some remarks by their PM to their own Parliament.”
“He (Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong) was making a general (&largely accurate) point. Given the stuff our own pols utter, we must learn to be less thin-skinned!” he added.
In another tweet, the Congress MP said, “We should have handled the matter with a statement saying ‘we heard with interest the PM’s remarks. But we don’t comment on other countries’ internal matters, nor on debates in foreign Parliaments, and urge everyone to follow the same principle.’ Far more effective and less offensive.”
Tharoor’s comments have come a day after India lodged a strong protest with Singapore over remarks made by its Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong that almost half of lawmakers in the Lok Sabha have criminal charges against them and that there has been a decline in the country’s democratic polity from “Nehru’s India”.
Speaking in Singapore Parliament, Loong had talked about how a democratic system needs lawmakers with integrity and invoked India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to stress how democracy should work in the city-state.
