A day after the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) summoned the High Commissioner of Singapore over Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s comment on Indian lawmakers, Congress leader and former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor said it was “unseemly” for the MEA to ‘summon’ the diplomat of a friendly country and suggested to be “less thin-skinned”.
On Thursday, India lodged a protest with Singapore over the comments made by its Prime Minister that almost half of the lawmakers in the Lok Sabha have criminal charges pending against them and pointing out a decline in the country’s democratic polity from “Jawaharlal Nehru’s India”.
India objects strongly
According to sources, the MEA had called Singapore’s High Commissioner to India, Simon Wong, to convey that Mr. Lee’s comments were “uncalled for” and that India strongly objected to them.
“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 [Mr. Lee] was making a general (& largely accurate) point. Given the stuff our own pols utter, we must learn to be less thin-skinned!” the former Minister of State for External Affairs tweeted.
“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, & urge everyone to follow the same principle.’ Far more effective & less offensive,” Mr. Tharoor said in another tweet.
In his speech, the Singaporean Prime Minister had invoked India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Nehru to stress how a democratic system needs lawmakers with integrity while talking functioning of democracy in the city-state.
