If the answer to “will Goa win today? is really sought, then it has to lie not just with the seats and votes the winning party is ultimately going to get, but it does with whether we have managed to decisively transform our collective will in doing two things a) Put a government in place which we truly believe should be given the next five years and b) Not have a government led by a party which the majority of voters have voted against.
The irony and perhaps the cruelty of democracy is that the first past the post system, which honours the candidate getting the most number of votes, decides the winner, even if the total number of votes against the winner, is more. And when it comes to government formation, a party wining one fifth of the seats, potentially has a shot at power if two or three parties, each getting less than 10% of the seats, backs the one getting one fifth of the seats, even if there is another party with close to 45 % of the seats. Is this democracy in spirit?
The irony of democracy also is that election is supposed to be about people, about the man or woman in your backyard who will be your voice in the highest platform of democracy in this land. But when votes are counted and the results come out, delivering a hotch-potch finding, which confuses all, the lip service and the refrain will be, “we will let the people decide” on who should form the government. The reality, is that the people have finished what they had to do on February 4, from March 11 onwards, it’s just plain politics.
And finally the irony of democracy, and perhaps in a manner which is ugly in Goa, is that past loyalties and even pre poll announcements of support, matter absolutely nothing. It almost seems that parties and candidates are dealing with two different worlds, one before the elections, upto voting day and the other, a very different and delinked world, after counting day. These worlds are almost loathe to meet. For instance in Porvorim and Panjim, the Congress did not field candidates and supported Babush Monserrate and Rohan Khaunte. Now, neither of them are pledging any loyalty to the Congress.
Vijai Sardesai who has had a mutually acrimonious relationship with the Congress says he is “not duty bound” to support the Congress while saying what would appear to be unthinkable coming from him, that Manohar Parrikar is BJP’s Chief ministerial candidate. Nothing wrong with obvious plain speaking perhaps, but the timing and the tone of the remarks were deliberate, clear and aimed to cause a flutter. But it’s clear that power will emerge as a more powerful glue than ideology and this is a malaise which will strike all parties.
The hunger for power above all else, is a true all party democratic movement in Goa.
As the counting progresses and the results come in, how much will the mind go back to why ordinary Goans wanted Elections 2017 to be truly decisive? Will a just regional plan for Goa, opportunities for wealth creation through skill development, a protective ring around our forests and communidades to stop the onslaught of vilas and golf courses, and the prevention of a license spree for casinos, be even issues for discussion, before the next government formation?
Instead the discourse will be about getting power at any cost, with the side story of backing power at any cost. And in the designing of this script, a dream script which could have been hand-woven by ordinary people will fall by the way side.
While it always injurious to hazard firm guesses on where the power centre will lie, either which way, we are set to witness more of the same thing. The feeling of dejavu, is not always of elation but of fatigue and even hopelessness.
On the eve of the ides of March, will the people of Goa win? That is the question.
