THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2024
With less than a week left for the closing of nominations, the news flow is filled with stories of people resigning and contesting, for parties they have joined hours or minutes ago. Some are going independent out of choice, as a well-planned strategy, others are doing it out of compulsion after being denied tickets by a party.
Some have changed one party, others have changed two. Many joined parties at the end of the monsoons but could not even complete the winter with them. Some lasted even less, less than three weeks. In Curtorim, both Congress’ potential candidates joined other parties and quit again. Party colleagues are now rival candidates (e.g Canacona, Mandrem). More than half the constituencies have at least one incident of a party getting a last-minute entrant from another party and denying the person who spent the last two months working hard for the party.
Both parties and candidates are playing with each other
There is no ideology, there is no party vision or planning, there is no discussion, forget any consensus on how bread and butter issues like health, education, environment, urban planning, employment, jobs, and so on, will be addressed. Instead, parties and politicians are moving pieces on aches board, trying to outsmart each other to field their own candidates and fund others to ensure that the mathematics of the vote allotment ultimately suit them
This election is no longer about people, it is about the vote game
It all boils down to vote number crunching and how best the vote combination can work by keeping the pie divided at one level. At another level it is not so much about coming to power but winning enough seats to be in the game, to make sure that no government can be formed without your party being in the discussion,
Sadly, when you come to the last mile, it is all about getting power or cutting your losses and not at all about a better Goa.
IF THIS IS THE WAY OUR ELECTIONS ARE HELD, GOOD PEOPLE WILL NOT TRUST DEMOCRACY
At stake is not just putting a new government in place. It is far more serious than that. At stake is protecting the essence of democracy which works towards removing power centers and putting in place people’s governance at all levels. But, the manner in which preference is given to “ready-made” power centers, clearly shows that no party and majority of politicians, want to invest in a process where they want to get back to the roots and rebuild a people-based and people led system. Is there any hope for a democracy where bringing new faces, means giving wives of long-time politicians a ticket and extending the family raj style of politics?
As long as democracy is condensed to five weeks of political activity before elections, this is the brand of democracy you will get
Isn’t it shameful that from 2017 to 2022, most political parties have been unable to prepare grassroots organisations and groom potential candidates? In civil societies and democracies, the candidate becomes obvious by dint of working with the people across the full term even when not in power.
Instead, even with less than a week before the last day for filing nominations, voters in many seats do not even know who their choices of candidates will be. In many places, two or three aspirants of the party are setting off each morning in the hope that their party chooses them. Their biggest challenges are to first win the confidence of their party and then try and win the coincidence of the people.
Are the people in charge? Do they have any control over their futures? In this kind of system, people have little chance to rule
The system must change. Now the same old forces, the same tainted forces, the same power-hungry forces are playing their power games. Once in power the same routine will start with no one even looking at the needs of the common man for five years
The only hope is to vote for good people, irrespective of their parties
There are still people in these elections, who can and want to save democracy. There are candidates who are the epitome of what good leaders should be. If people decide to identify them and give them a chance, against the established and the powerful who are only after their own positions, miracles can happen. Everyone remembers the winner and the runner-up. But there be hidden gems among those who come third and fourth, who, if given slight support can be in the race and even win. It is the responsibility of those who truly believe in democracy to give the underdogs a chance, of bringing clean politics back, by backing clean people.
If we want real change, we must change. In the way we think and the way we chose.
