Environment and Forests minister Alina Saldanha has been saying loudly and clearly that she is against the setting up of marinas in Goa. She said it a couple of weeks ago at a function where she shared the dais with another minister, Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavalikar. She had also said the same thing a week before that. Perhaps at that time she felt she had to repeat it as her voice had not been heard by the government and thought that the PWD minister present at the function would carry her views to the chief minister. But, hold it, she as a minister is a part of the government, an important member of the state’s highest decision making body – the cabinet. Why does a minister have to speak out her views in public when she can do it just as well in the cabinet?
Or is it that ministers aren’t allowed to speak out during cabinet meetings on matters that are not palatable to the chief minister? Presumably they are asked to shut their mouths on such issues.
There appears to be something askew here. It is less than four weeks ago the State’s Investment Promotion Board cleared 11 proposals, including the setting up of two marinas, one of them in Saldanha’s constituency. After that there have been two cabinet meetings held and Saldanha had opportunity to speak out when the council of ministers met. She could have said what she wanted to say at this meeting, but apparently she chose a public forum to air her views. And then, the chief minister says that she came to him with a copy of the newspaper that reported this and she told him that she had been misquoted. Was she really?
No says she. All she pointed out was a single word that she had not used. Her stand against the marinas has not changed. Nobody has been misquoted here for it is the chief minister himself who said that he told his minister to shut up on the issue. And he made the statement on the day he was celebrating six months in office. Was he really proud of having said that?
Saldanha has come clear on her stand on marinas – she is against it and has said so in writing to the present chief minister and his predecessor – so she says. Her stake in the issue is double pronged. She is the MLA of the area where one of the marinas is slated to come up and where the villagers have already opposed it, and secondly she is the State Environment minister, whose job it is to protect the environment of the State. There is no conflict of interest here. As MLA she is expected to align with her constituents and as minister to do her duty to the portfolio she has been allotted. And in her case she has to do whatever is in her power to protect the environment. At times she may come into conflict with other members of the cabinet on this, but as guardian of the State’s environment she will have to stand by her principles and fight on the side of the law.
The issue is now hotting up. There is no way that Saldanha can now go back on the issue and back the marinas. She has to stand with the people of her constituency in their fight against the project. That is what her late husband Matanhy Saldanha would have done and that is what is expected from her. For in this fight against the marinas, Saldanha has been able to even bring her old foes to her side. There has been unity in the area against the marina project and Saldanha is emerging as the leader.
This is the first time that Goa is seeing a different side of the MLA. She was elected to the Legislative Assembly unopposed and there has been little that she has said or done in the public arena that provided any evidence of her activist nature. The marina issue could change that. It is the issue that could make Saldanha emerge as an activist leader in her own right, and interestingly the MLA is fighting her own government, the government in which she is a minister. This will make it doubly difficult for Saldanha. But can she do it, take on her own government? The coming months will tell.
