07 Mar 2021  |   05:08am IST

IS ELECTORAL POLITICS THE NEXT STEP FOR CIVIL SOCIETY MOVEMENTS?

IS ELECTORAL POLITICS THE NEXT STEP FOR CIVIL SOCIETY MOVEMENTS?

Alexandre Moniz Barbosa

After fighting from street corners and from alongside the railway lines; after lighting candles on railway tracks and dousing the unlit fires of coal transportation; after marching from dawn to dusk for peace and flash mob dancing for awareness; Goencho Avaaz has taken the proverbial plunge into politics. The move didn’t come as a surprise to those who had been following the journey of the group. So when on a Sunday morning, as the rest of Goa relaxed after a week of hardwork, Captain Viriato Fernandes, his co-convenor Swapnesh Sherlekar and the rest of the core team of Goencho Avaaz announced their intention to test the electoral waters, it created but a few ripples in the putrid political waters of Goa. After the political shenanigans that Goa has been privy too, the vaudeville where its elected representatives have been party to, another political party on the scene is just another actor entering a crowded stage with nothing more than a bit role to play.

But, can this new performer that has waltzed onto the floor revolutionise Goa’s political theatre? Too early to say so with certainty, but there is something in this new political party that kindles a hope that it could be the gamechanger that Goan politics has been missing.

Here’s what Goencho Avaaz brings to the table. After three years of fighting from outside the system, Goencho Avaaz plans to become insiders and bring about the change from within. That is the biggest advantage and simultaneously the biggest disadvantage for the party. Here is a political party that does not have a single politician in its core executive committee. They are all persons who have never tasted power. It is this quality of newness that brings a whiff of freshness to the stale political air. But this makes them amateurs in a field of professional politicians , minnows who can be trampled easily by the giants of the game. 

So is Goencho Avaaz dreaming the impossible dream, fighting the unbeatable foe, running where the brave dare not go? Goencho Avaaz will, however, not be tilting at windmills. For them the foe is not imaginary. They are in the ring to fight the good fight. As a political party they aspire to form a government – they can’t aim for anything less – but their government is one that ‘firmly places the interests of Goa and its people at the forefront’. No political party will claim anything less than this. Where Goencho Avaaz is different is that it has a history, however brief it may be, of taking up people’s issues. 

Goencho Avaaz as a civil society group has not chalked up any major success stories. As an umbrella group of various non-government organisations it shot into the limelight in April 2018 with a well-attended rally at Lohia Maidan where it picked on selected politicians exposing their misdeeds. This meeting, and several others after it, attracted large turnouts and within a matter of weeks Goencho Avaaz gained in popularity across the State. The group continued to spearhead many movements, especially of issues that are close to the hearts of Goans, gathering support and finding itself drawn into the political vortex.  Now that it is in, Goencho Avaaz has to prove that is it different from the others. If it can’t do so, then their entry would be as pointless as attempting to write with a blunt pencil.

For Goencho Avaaz, if it has long-term plans for Goa and for itself as a political entity, its nascent days are going to be its most difficult test as it attempts to prove it will be different from the others. It is at this stage that it will have to strike deep roots in the political jungle that it intends to inhabit. 

From a civil society movement to a political party, the move has been made. But this history will not be in favour of Goencho Avaaz. Success stories of civil movements turning political parties are not many, and in Goa, fewer still. Go back to 2006, when the Goa Bachao Abhiyan was at its peak after having forced the then government to withdraw the Goa Regional Plan 2011. It was floating on a victory that had struck a chord with many a Goan. It had a triumph to boast about had it sought to don the avatar of a political party and stayed on to ‘Bachao’ Goa from more than that Regional Plan. It chose not to dabble with politics. Many political pundits of that time thought it was a bad idea. Many others to this day think that the GBA erred by not going political. It is difficult to visualise what could have happened had the Goa Bachao Abhiyan donned the political mantle, and perhaps it is better now to dwell on this. 

Goencho Avaaz, on the other hand, does not have that big victory to propel it as a major player for the 2022 State Assembly polls. Yet, there is in the Goa of today a veritable vacuum of principled politics that desperately requires to be filled. What the State has seen is unbridled horse-trading and stitching of loose alliances that have only the quest of power as the unifying cord. Since the 2017 election, 13 MLAs have changed parties, while five MLAs who had been in the governing coalition have turned bitter critics of the government once they were divested of power, and another MLA who till recently was supporting the government has officially withdrawn his support. That’s 19 out of 40 MLAs who have changed positions – either parties or their support – in the last four years. Does Goa deserve this?

Can Goencho Avaaz bring that quality of principles into politics that is sorely lacking today? Can it, as it claims in its vision statement be the ‘voices of positive change’, who will ‘preserve and safeguard the way of life of all Goans and the unique identity of the State, promote unity amongst the different sections of the Goan community, uphold democratic values and seek to promote the economic weel-being of the State and its people’? Goa has seen many parties, politicians and others claim all this and more. It waits to see at least one of the many claimants actually live up to the promise. Can Goencho Avaaz be the one?

Alexandre Moniz Barbosa is Editor, Herald. He tweets at @monizbarbosa

IDhar UDHAR

Idhar Udhar