There is no doubt that the Congress has descended from a lineage that has its roots in India’s freedom struggle. However that seems to be the only factor they can crow about in the recent past, on one hand, PM Modi uses every opportunity to blame ex-PM Pandit Nehru for every problem the country faces and on the other Congress in its current form has only the achievements of Nehru, Indira and Rajiv to harp on, nothing more.
The current leadership of Congress is “Of Gandhi, By Gandhi and For Gandhi”. The only people or party that is continuously benefiting from the fact that the Congress still takes part in elections is the BJP. Either the Congress supplies candidates or elected members to the BJP or because of their presence in an election the vote is split and BJP candidates win.
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Goa is a good example of both; the Congress supplied ten MLAs for the BJP government to be formed despite being the party with the maximum no of seats in 2017. In 2022, their vote share fell to 23% and seats share fell from 17 to 11. One cannot help but notice that the party had no strategy and most of the candidates were last minute choices except Yuri Alemao who was visible throughout.
The Church in Goa wrongly believes that the Congress is a secular party and thus insists on backing overtly or covertly. Nothing can be further from the truth, the Congress is a corrupt party and it is because of this the BJP got a toe hold in the first place. The Church must and should have spoken about this corruption and not glossed over it by giving more weightage to supposedly secular credentials.
Shashi Tharoor famously tweeted, “I learn from my mistakes so I will make more, so I learn more”. Who was he speaking about if not Rahul Gandhi? It is clear, he is not learning and since the Congress is a family jewel none else with capabilities is allowed to break the proverbial glass ceiling into leadership of the party. So while State heads rolled no one among the sycophants surrounding the Gandhi’s allowed their resignation to be accepted. In the Congress, offering to resign is considered atonement for sins of omission and life goes on, Girish the Goa State head has resigned for the third time, so no one takes resignations seriously.
According to another senior leader with no mass base, Kapil Sibal, 117 MPs/MLAs and 222 candidates have left the Congress party in the last few years. Most of these capable leaders opt to shift to other parties or start their own. Since there is now no leader with a mass base, left in the party and if the Gandhi’s quit, there will be no party and it will self destruct.
Let us use the Goa Assembly election to check if the Congress is serious about winning an election. They announced Elvis Gomes as a candidate for the Panjim constituency at the last minute; no one was groomed at all to represent this seat, were they expecting the sitting MLA not to get the BJP ticket so they would give it to him?
In Nuvem, they waited till the last minute to announce Aleixo as their candidate, why the suspense, were they negotiating another deal?
Aleixo was dropped in the previous election and the ticket was offered to Wilfred D’sa, who promptly jumped. Aleixo has to be commended for not standing as Independent in 2017, this seems to be the norm and thankfully his loyalty was rewarded. It is surely an exception in these times.
In Benaulim, a new and upcoming face was sacrificed for no apparent reason other than harakiri. In Poriem, represented by Sr Rane, would it not have been prudent to be discussing with him, his successor given he is 80 plus, at the last minute even having a candidate was pointless. In St Andre their mistake was beneficial to the RG.
In North Goa, the Congress managed to pick three seats only because of their, day-old import Michael Lobo, the Congress had nothing to contribute to those wins. It was a clear case of a deal working out for the Congress. All these incidents show that the Congress was never serious about the elections in Goa or in any of the other States.
The BJP takes elections seriously and that seriousness is not seen in anything the Congress has done, given the fact that they believe that they are the alternate to the BJP, across the country they have been relegated to nowhere, in UP they garnered 2% of the votes, despite the presence of star campaigner Priyanka Gandhi.
There are a few good leaders in the Congress and they will surely be accommodated in other parties or maybe start their own, which will have the stomach to fight the BJP, which is the main opponent in any election across the country, this is needed to have a healthy democracy. Who will replace the Congress would be difficult to say, but once a vacuum is created it will fill fast, that is assured. Once it does we will have a healthy opposition and not a compromised one.
Without the Gandhis, no revamp is possible and with them there is no hope. So dear Congress party if you have the interests of Goa/India on your mind, please move on and let others who have the will, fight to ensure a healthy democracy.
(The author prefers to write rather than chat in a balcao.)
