Political Pickle

Why a senior Lankan leader prefers Modi as PM

When the world’s largest democracy votes, it is but natural that countries around the world will keep a keen watch on which way the wind is blowing. Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan indicated last month that there may be a better chance of peace talks with India and settle the Kashmir issue if Narendra Modi’s BJP returned to power. 

A senior member of the Lankan opposition told Filter Kaapi on condition that he will not be quoted that his party would prefer Modi in office for a second term. What is significant is that the reason he gave was very different from what Imran Khan spoke about. 

“We don’t have an issue per se with the Congress. But with the Congress in an alliance with the DMK, it would mean constant raking up the Sri Lankan Tamils issue. It would result in constant tension between Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu since the Congress government at the Centre will be forced to listen to its partner, the DMK. But the BJP does not care much about south India, it does not have much political stakes in Tamil Nadu. So there is no tension,” he said.

Ministers in the Lankan government chose not to be vocal about they termed was India’s internal affair and said they would work with any party or coalition that came to power. 

“We seek peace and cooperation with our immediate neighbour. So we wish you well with your election results,” said another senior leader. 

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.