The Congress is its own worst enemy
If the Congress was a multinational company, its handling of the Goa elections would be a fit case study on how a potentially secure project became a losing proposition. It’s a subject which would have rattled the finest minds in Management institutions as to how an organization can inflict so much of self injury, without even realizing it.
The crisis is even worse than what is visible to the common man. Even as serious Congressmen are leaving the party after they were rejected in favour of defectors or new comers backed by families, the congress continues to think, it’s has done right by choosing win ability over loyalty. But no one has bothered to check if-just if- both can be directly proportional to each other.
If a serious cost benefit analysis is done, the Congress will realise that in many constituencies where it has faced rebellion, it had congressmen who had at least as good a chance if not better than the ones chosen. To put it bluntly, the Congress, for a reason difficult to fathom, has sacrificed itself at the altar of the ego of a few families led by the price of Satarri Vishwajit Rane.
But the Congress mismanagement story goes beyond the Rane’s and has a pan Goan spread. Some baffling developments are beyond the grasping capacity of the any dyed in the wool political watcher. Fatorda, a tiny constituency hugging Margao was set to return to the congress fold after a high voltage kick start to Congress preparations months ago with the opening of Vijai Sardesais election office. From the Chief Minister, to the AICC in charge of Goa JS Brar to Churchill Alemao, all held hands to signal a unified move to get this seat back. Some hands that held the candidate are the very hands that are plotting against him.
Why is the party playing games with its people? Plain logic suggests that when you virtually announce a candidate and take part in his poll build up, you go with him in a focused manner. The behavior in Fatorda is not about one candidate and his political aspirations. It’s about how the party is making a strategic mistake which could affect its government formation. It’s naïve to suggest the congress doesn’t know this. And it’s sad to admit that it’s doing this deliberately.
Look at the three seats not announced. Fatorda, Mormugao and Canacona. Sardesai, Sankalp Amonkar and Isidore Fernandes are a troika expected to pretty much function independently and not as members of a herd. This naturally affects the free flowing swagger of three families- Rane’s Monserattes and the Alemaos. Let’s face this. These families are so obsessed with being at the centre of the power centre that they may have affected the chances of the congress coming to power.
All is not completely lost though. It has two days to salvage what can still be. A genuine effort needs to be made to reach out to muslim brethren as well as see to it that Sardesai and Amonkar and Isidore do not contest against the party.
Meanwhile, there is another element here. Chief Minister Digambar Kamat has of late backed Sardesai openly but without results. If the Chief Minister feels so strongly on a couple of seats, it is normally given in any descent political process. It is just to compare the Chief Ministers nominations with Vishwajit Ranes. All of Ranes men were cleared in the first shot including defectors while those backed by the Chief Minister have been kept hanging till the last moment. The obvious inference is that the Chief Minister is not its most important leader or he is playing his own defined secret role which can’t be comprehended.
The Chief Minister was expected to be far more assertive to get his choices done, especially in constituencies in his back yard.
Then there is this little business of actually contesting these elections. In the circus of pulls and pressures, the GPCC has not finalised its manifesto or its election material or for that matter its list if key campaigners and their travel schedule. Does it even plan to go to the people as one or leave it to individual leaders to consider their own seats as their world and then wait for the numbers to add up?
It is said that in any battle field there is one enemy that is difficult to beat. Your own. The Congress is its own worst enemy.
