Unsavoury comments

There can be no two opinions that comments made by Singapore Prime Minister about Indian lawmakers are in extremely bad taste. It does not behove the prime minister of a nation to pass such inappropriate remarks about the parliamentarians of a country with whom they have relations going back to centuries and bonds that are embedded in culture and ethnicity, besides trade and commerce ties.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was right on track when he invoked India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and asked his own parliamentarians to emulate his manners and ethos to stress how democracy should be run and emphasized the need for legislators to develop unimpeachable integrity. But the digression which entailed denigration of the Members of the Lok Sabha—half of whom he said had criminal charges pending against them, including charges of rape and murder—is bound to raise ire in New Delhi which it did. It is in the fitness of things that the Ministry of External Affairs summoned the High Commissioner Simon Wong to lodge a strong protest against remarks which were unwarranted and totally uncalled for.

They were certainly not off the cuff as Mr. Loong was reading from a prepared speech and included even Israel among those nations where democracy has sustained dents in the wake of criminalization of politics. Whatever may be the truth, foreign relations are a tightrope walk and one has to carefully weigh his or her words before they are uttered. Diplomacy is a sensitive business and relations between two nations and their people are predicated on the respect and regard they accord to each other. It demands that even when one ought to say ‘No’ in negotiations, he or she should use ‘Perhaps’. Mr. Loong has certainly let down his guard while making a comment on the parliamentarians of a nation that is not only a large partner in trade and strategic relations, but has to be respected for the major role it plays in shaping Indian Ocean politics.

However, the ire will be misplaced if part of it owes itself to plaudits attributed to Jawaharlal Nehru whose contribution to setting healthy democratic standards in the founding years of India’s emergence as a nation-state is unmatched. Viewed from this angle, Mr. Loong deserves appreciation for commemorating Nehru’s contributions and accomplishments when the same are being belittled within his own country. Whatever may be the case, the best way to patch up the issue would be for the Singapore PM to withdraw the comments on Indian parliamentarians as these are construed to be needless interference in the internal affairs of a nation with whom the former shares a great deal of bonhomie.