TEAM HERALD
MARGAO: Luchel Camino de Monte – the Borda residence of AICC general secretary Luizinho Faleiro – is not new to political activity. The residence has been the meeting point for many a political heavyweight during the days when Faleiro enjoyed a prominent place in Goa’s social and political scenes.
With the Congress sending an SOS to the AICC general secretary to come and help party candidate, Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco, especially in his home segment, Navelim, Faleiro has decided to plunge into the Congress election campaign in South Goa for the next three days.
The AICC general secretary, who is coming to Goa on Tuesday, has called a meeting of workers from Navelim segment at his Borda residence tomorrow evening. And Reginaldo’s campaign managers are only too eager to utilise Faleiro’s services to shore up the Congress candidate’s chances specially in Navelim segment, wherein the BJP-Avertano combine and Trinamool Congress candidate Churchill Alemao are battling it out for a slice of the cake, relegating the Congress to the background.
Sources said that Congress managers have even mooted a road show with Reginaldo and Faleiro and other Congress leaders in certain pockets of Salcete, to drum up support for the Congress candidate.
Sources said while Faleiro will preside over the Tuesday meeting with party workers. His office has been working overtime over the last couple of days in contact Congress workers and seeking their presence for the meeting.
Faleiro’s decision to join Reginaldo’s campaign assumes significance and comes against the backdrop of the Congress being pushed to the background in the Navelim segment after Churchill’s sudden exit from the Congress. Congress leaders in private admit that Faleiro can save the situation for the Congress in Navelim given his old contacts with Congressmen spread across the five villages of Navelim, Telaulim, Aquem-Baixo, Rumdamol and Davorlim. Besides, sources said that Faleiro can play his own role in convincing a number of former Congressmen who are now prominent faces in both the Churchill and Avertano camps to return back to the Congress fold in the changing political equations in Navelim, especially in the light of Churchill walking out of the Congress to embrace the Trinamool Congress.
Secondly, Congress leaders say that presence of a senior leader like Faleiro may give the much needed push to Reginaldo’s campaign, more so when the party’s poll campaign is punctured with rebellion by senior leaders like sitting MP Francisco Sardinha, Churchill Alemao and Mauvin Godinho.
