Yahoo Finance 'Sonia Gandhi chose Manmohan as PM because he was no threat to her son': Obama
Former US president Barack Obama's 768-page memoir 'A Promised Land' is making waves ever since excerpts from his book are published in the media. Reflecting on former Indian prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, Obama writes: "Singh and I had developed a warm and productive relationship. While he could be cautious in foreign policy, unwilling to get out too far ahead of an Indian bureaucracy that was historically suspicious of U.S. intentions, our time together confirmed my initial impression of him as a man of uncommon wisdom and decency."
However, he also observed that Singh owed his position as PM to the Congress president Sonia Gandhi. "In fact, he owed his position to Sonia Gandhi…more than one political observer believed that she’d chosen Singh precisely because as an elderly Sikh with no national political base, he posed no threat to her forty-year-old son, Rahul, whom she was grooming to take over the Congress Party."
Obama called Sonia a "striking woman in her sixties, dressed in a traditional sari, with dark, probing eyes and a quiet, regal presence."
His observation of Rahul Gandhi has already stirred the hornet's nest. He described the Congress scion as a nervous student who "lacked either the aptitude or the passion to master the subject."
Also Read: Is Sonia Gandhi an insecure mother?
