TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2024
The continuously missing deadlines of candidate announcements is not just shameful for Congress but make those making those deadlines look ill-informed.
As evergreen losers are still going all out to find their way in through their Congress family boss, the grassroots workers of the party, many of whom have remained with the Congress for decades and more of them in spirit are feeling disgusted at what looks like an ‘arrangement’ or surrender.
Why are credible senior leaders sitting home after leaving the party while manipulators are having a party where defection and self-interest are the main dishes?
With just 36 days to go before polling, manipulations and trickery are ruling and ruining the process. In South Goa, there is a constantly winning sitting MP. As a sitting MP, he deserves a conversation at the very least. Far from that, the conductor is roaming around canvassing in Canacona. In Mormugao a newcomer with a minimal restricted following is being propped up by institutions of faith that have plunged directly into electoral politics, and who were hobnobbing with past defectors.
And some are video experts in uniform. Where are they now? Are these holy people celebrating the fact that genuine leaders have been made to sit at home and manipulators are dancing?
While workers are left high and dry, knowing what the main dishes of the party are being cooked, some senior Congressmen wonder why no effort has been taken to even speak to those who left the party for various reasons and are willing to return if the circumstances are right.
It is also learnt that the conductor of manipulation has still not given up on either of the two seats and may even seek to worm his way into the North Goa reckoning if South Goa does not work out.
Different leaders at different times have “declared” a date and time for the candidate declaration. For five days this drama has been going on. Each deadline is getting crossed and yet no one in the senior leadership of Congress is in any state to explain about the critical failure to name candidates in 2 seats of which they have a sitting MP who has won four times in one of them.
Congress people themselves admit that in North Goa in addition to the situation in the South, there is absolutely no party organisation.
The last office bearers meeting of the Goa Congress happened in December 2023. So in effect in the last five months leading up to the Lok Sabha elections the office bearers' meeting of the GPCC has not been met once.
As the delay continues individual and group interests are surfacing above party interests. At this point, the BJP is not the opposition. It is from within and has been expressed clearly by Congress leaders and political analysts like Agnelo Fernandes and Trajano D'Mello who have clearly stated that the conductor of manipulations is on a fundraising campaign and is preparing dishes of deceit.
To ensure that he could print his South Goa ticket the conductor was at his manipulative best when he sent word to minority Congressmen in North Goa to try for a ticket. If that had been successful, the conductor who is not from the minorities, would claim the South Goa seat in the pretext that there was a minority candidate in North Goa. But are there any such credible candidates in the first place? Surely not politicians in black coats who are doing ballroom dancing with the BJP.
While this circus of manipulation, chamchagiri and self-interest continues people's issues are buried while people with self-interests are resurrected.
There needs to be a people manifesto that demands answers people have asked about the deteriorating quality of their lives, of their fight against injustice, of broken promises.
Panjim has been destroyed. The chaos of incompetence, lack of direction and purposeful lack of coordination has made the city into a death trap, a choking chamber of dust and an urban slum. It took the heroes of our Judiciary, highly respected High Court Justices Mahesh Sonak and Valmiki SA Menezes to personally walk on the streets of dirt to get a first-hand account of the experience and understand the plight of the petitioners who had moved their court for relief.
At the other end in the rural areas, Goan farmers are still crying for someone to stop filth from entering their fields or build the western bypass on stilts so their fields are not flooded.
Elections are about choices. Democracy is about the freedom to pick between choices hand. It is not just the right but the duty of parties to put forward their best choice in a transparent honest manner giving the people ample time to make up their minds. In the truest sense, there are no party voters but there are Goan voters, and for them to make a change, the choices must be available to them much in advance.
When that does not happen, people feel cheated. This delay is not a mere delay. It’s almost a death sentence to an election that should be played on a level playing field.
