Politics in Goa has for long been tainted by opportunism. There is no ideology and little of loyalty among today’s politicians. Party affiliations are changed entirely depending on which way the wind is blowing and on which side the grass is growing greener, or seemingly growing greener, as perceptions among the politicians account for far more than reality in the games they play.
Former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Bicholim constituency, Rajesh Patnekar, is back in his old party, the party which he had quit in the run up to the 2012 Assembly elections. And he is quite candid about the fact that he quit the BJP in 2012 because he believed that the party would not win enough seats to form the government in the State. His reasoning was that he had spent two terms in the opposition and this had adversely affected development in his constituency of Bicholim and he preferred to be with the winning side in the next term. He lost the election, the Congress fared badly and he remained in the wilderness. Now, he’s back in the BJP which, going by the reason he gave to quit the party in 2012, it can be assumed that he currently believes the BJP is going to return to power in 2017.
That has been the bane of Goan politics, where the ability to win, or the perception that a party or person can win, decides who is the candidate in a particular constituency. Selection of candidates does not depend on the legislative capability or integrity of the person but on the ‘winnability’ prospects of the person. When politicians choose their party because the party can win and political parties choose candidates based on their winning chances the vision that a political party and a politician should have gets blurred. This has reduced politics in Goa to mere opportunism which affects governance and also development. When politics of opportunism is played, where success is the only criteria that determines the selection of a candidate, then there is little hope that the future will be any better than the past, or that the errors of the past won’t be repeated in the future. Here, both the political parties and the individual politicians are to be blamed.
This is not a new phenomenon in the State and has been the practice for quite a few years, right from the 1970s when MLAs defected not because of ideological differences, but because they wanted a larger share of the pie. In the following decades the number of defections grew and in the 1990s Goa saw a spate of defections and governments as MLAs jostled for a red beacon on their cars. There is just over a year to go before the next Legislative elections are called. And, if now it is Patnekar who has returned to his old party, in the coming months there will be many more politicians and aspiring candidates who will be shifting allegiance and the number of such politicians will increase as election day approaches.
Goa needs and deserves a better lot of politicians than those who are swayed by the power that winning an election brings them. It needs politicians who will work for the State, keeping in mind what is best for Goa and the people of this State. It needs people with vision who can bring about a qualitative change in the State. The coming months are going to see many changes in political affiliations as political parties and politicians attempt to gauge the mood of the people and decide on which side they want to be when Goa goes to the polls.
Since the politicians will not change their way of thinking, it is for the people to send out a message to them that opportunism will not be tolerated. The best way to do it is by pressing the right button on the electronic voting machine and sending the opportunist home.
