Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa wants the opposition political parties in the country to emulate the behaviour of the main Indian Opposition parties when national pride was at stake.
Addressing a meeting at Matara, the President said that however much divided the Opposition parties were in India, once they stepped out, their national pride took over. They not only refrained from criticising the conduct of their government when in foreign soil; they even actively defended some of the actions.
The President recalled an occasion when the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha , Sushma Swaraj, met him, and said that the stature of Ms. Swaraj grew in his eyes because of the manner and passion with which she spoke about India and the functioning of its Parliament.
He wanted the main Opposition in Sri Lanka to take a leaf out of this and project Sri Lanka in a positive light when abroad. He regretted that this was not the case in many instances.
Pointing to the Indian example, he said that the leaders of the same political parties which spoke about India in such glowing terms abroad had serious differences with the ruling party and had often made the point in the Indian Parliament. But this politics never spilled from the country to the outside, he noted and added that Opposition leaders had the responsibility to refrain from constantly speaking ill of their own country while abroad.
