Rajapaksa apologises to Jaya !

‘Mother, I have made a huge mistake, forgive me, says the poster’

Chennai: A poster has come up in Coimbatore which shows Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa apologising to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa with folded hands. The poster, in Tamil, has a tagline: "Mother, I have made a huge mistake, forgive me."

The poster has been put up by an office-bearer of Amma Peravai, a frontal wing in the name of Ms Jayalalithaa. It comes a day after the Lankan government apologised for a controversial article and depiction of Ms Jayalalithaa and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the official website of its defence ministry.

In an "unqualified apology", the Lankan government said the article was published "without proper authorization. The article doesn't reflect our government's official position."

The statement came after Jayalalithaa wrote to PM Modi urging him to summon the Lankan envoy and seek an apology for the article titled "How Meaningful Are Jayalalithaa's Love Letters to Narendra Modi". It had a morphed image of the Chief Minister and Mr Modi in a heart-shaped thought bubble. Rajapaksa is regularly attacked by Jayalalithaa and other political parties in Tamil Nadu for alleged atrocities against his island's ethnic Tamils.

These parties accuse Rajapaksa of presiding over the killing of civilians in the final stages of the war against the Tamil separatist outfit LTTE in 2009. It is a political minefield in the state where assembly elections are due in 2016.