It’s going to be close to a month since John Fernandes was “sacked”, and Luizinho was “appointed’ as the GPCC president, and while there are no signs of the first one going or the second one taking over, the biggest “non-happening”, of the political season doesn’t in any way make the Congress any stronger or better equipped to step on the path of revival. Fernandes’ boarding pass for a flight out of the GPCC was ready. At the last moment Raja Digvijay Singh, called one of the umpteen favours that the AICC boss Sonia Gandhi owed him to stall his exist purely because it would reflect very poorly on Singh who chose Fernandes to head GPCC.
And while Fernandes, has used this breather to take off on a renewed ride to suspend and drop more Congress men and women from the party, he has definitely used up every brownie point accrued for his apparently clean image and no nonsense disposition. While the latter claim is nonsensical, given the utter chaos the party is in, the “clean image” is only just an image after he played host to convicted man who openly alleged that bribes were paid by his company to the senior most Congress leader PratapSingh Rane, to secure mining leases.
Today the GPCC is run by new comers, who are comfortable in the cosmos of John and company as opposed to the baggage of the past. While this maybe a fresh new approach, one must understand that the old order cannot change by carpet bombing the past leadership out of existence. Even as the Congress was reduced to nine seats, a very significant statistic has been kept out of the equation- the vote share. The Congress vote share of 34.87% was less than one percent short of the BJP’s 35.53. The game changer was the MGP vote of 5.92 % which took the BJP+MGP vote share to about 41%.
For the Congress, this continues to be a serious vote bank and it means that even as the party got wiped out, it still retained pockets of influence across constituencies.
With the mood of the people showing a down turn the BJP’s 35.53% bastion is under the threat of being breached. Interestingly, as we stand today, that Congress’ 34.87 % looks more likely to survive than the BJP’s percentage points. The custodians of this vote bank, inspite of all their ills, are the leaders who contested and lost but in doing so they retained sufficient support from where a challenge can be mounted. However the John Fernandes’ coaching manual knows only one method. Kick the old team members so far away from the stadium that they are not even present as fans when the next game starts. This cannot be a manual which has been handed down by the AICC, or even John Fernandes’ temporary Godfather Digvijay Singh. This became all the more obvious when during a recent pit stop at the Dabolim airport enroute to Belgaum, Digvijay Singh completely cold shouldered John Fernandes, who had rushed to pay obeisance to him. Clearly, Fernandes is a bone stuck in the neck of the GPCC, who can neither be swallowed nor digested but just extracted.
The revival process has to be initiated with a mix of the old and the new with senior leaders involved in introspection and planning and the younger lot carrying the fire. Let this be said, sunrise is nowhere around the corner. The current exercise is to be still relevant, to nurture the existing vote share and keep being in the frame as the government of the day misses yet another deadline or promise. Above all, the party must have a leader who believes in the people who still continue to be Congressmen at a time when this means isolation, vindictiveness and even attack from the ruling government. It still takes courage to continue, when some leaders like Mauvin Godinho have decided to “convert”. People like him are not served any notices by the likes of John Fernandes or dropped because a Congress MLA, even if he wears saffron robes, is prime property.
The difference between 2012 and now for the Congress, is that it now thinks that it still can be in that frame for the battle of 2017. For it to remain there, John Fernandes must get out of that frame.
