The sudden mini spurt of opportunistic regional parties popping up, with the two of them heavy with past baggage and by no means “fresh”, are nothing but Christmas and New Year gifts to the BJP. Both will play a part of splitting the anti-BJP vote in constituencies they chose to contest. And with the Congress and the new independent Regional Force headed by independent MLAs, it’s a merry confusing cocktail. The BJP for a start has the bragging rights. Ho ho.
But there’s a caveat. A single point opposition which seeks to accumulate and share and not split and divide can counter this but that seems a very distant possibility now.
The Goa For Goans (GFG) moved from being the lead activist NGO fighting for Justice for Bismarque, to becoming a political party with ambitions to fight the 2017 elections, with such suddenness and alacrity that some of its own members were stumped and stunned. Spearheaded by Kennedy Afonso, who we thought had gotten rid of his political excess baggage as Churchill Alemao’s acolyte and foot soldier, is rightfully being asked if GFG is a creation to get the wily Varca strongman (well ex-strongman) back in ‘business’. (pun intended). At the same time Afonso did play a very big part in getting the Justice for Bismarque campaign going with his on the spot interventions. But the decision to suddenly form a party drags him into a zone of suspicion. He has also faced some teething and serious turbulence as soon as his GFG party was floated in the middle of an all-out people’s fight for Justice for Goa’s warrior priest Father Bismarque, who many feel was done to death.
Prashant Naik, his colleague in the organisation quit, calling Afonso “a dictator who puts up a one-man show”. He hit out at Afonso’s move to attempt to merge GFG with the Aam Admi Party, yet another player with serious intentions of contesting at least ten seats, including Benaulim and Saligao.
Meanwhile, the Goa Praja Party has been created with “old faces”. Pandurang Raut, the President of the GPP, who was the tourism minister during the Progressive Democratic Front regime, in the early nineties and Prakash Phadte the TCP minister for a brief while during Manohar Parrikar’s first term are fronting this. But just one statement has given away their designs.
“I stopped Carnival with the support of the Church and started Shigmo parade in Panaji when I was the tourism minister, in order to preserve Goan culture”, said Raut.
If their take on Goa’s culture is to stop the Carnival and state that Shigmo alone is the symbol of Goan culture, then we have a problem here. Goa needs to know what the Goa view of these so-called parties are. The Goa Praja Party (GPP) aims to cleanse the state of casinos, drugs and prostitution. Very noble indeed, but that’s exactly what the BJP said. Take a look at BJP’s vision document of 2012.
The GFG or the GPP will not be taken seriously unless they do the following. Announce that they are an anti-BJP force and will not have any covert or overt understanding with the BJP either before or after the elections. They need to declare that they will not be a part of a BJP coalition, even if they are leading it. They must declare that 100% of their candidates will be fresh, meaning they should never have been MLA’s. Thirdly they must declare their source of funds, make their bank account public and update every rupee they receive and spend on their website. The Goa Suraj Party incidentally is the only party which has so far been very insistent on each of these things and follows it to the core, unfortunately without electoral success. But it is the Goa of today and not the GSP which is to blame.
Most importantly, these regional forces must explain their stand on joining other like-minded forces as well as the Congress in the larger interest of an united opposition front rather than as spoiler forces with vested interests including batting for the BJP. Goa will be betrayed if the Goa Praja Party is actually a front of either the BJP or the MGP since the two will politically harm each other irrespective of their official positioning. Meanwhile the GFG should not emerge as the new Save Goa Party of Churchill Alemao under a new name.
Goa needs clarity. It cannot afford any further confusion and betrayal.
