The Goa Governor Mridula Sinha has enhanced the sanctity and gravitas of the institution of Governor by rightly returning the Government’s proposal to grant pardon to former minister and Nuvem MLA Mickky Pacheco for reconsideration. The Goa Government had proposed that the MLA, serving a jail sentence of six months for slapping a junior engineer be pardoned and released, a power the government does have.
The government does have the option of taking the same decision again sending it back to the Governor, but the return of its recommendation is a clear message that the government was over reaching itself to grant special favours to its political ally in a criminal case.
Notwithstanding the fact that Mickky Pacheco is in jail for an offence which pales into insignificance, compared to the crimes that other VIPs have committed and are nowhere near a police station, leave alone a jail, Pacheco has been convicted of slapping a government servant and this conviction has been upheld by the Supreme Court. It’s a six months sentence and needs to be served for the ends of justice to be met.
The Parsekar government shouldn’t have considered the pardon application in the first place but it chose to do so for services rendered by Mickky Pacheco in the Lok Sabha elections, where minority votes were split in Nuvem and Benaulim between the BJP and the Congress. With BJP’s voter base in Salcete under threat, the government needs to keep working with the Goa Vikas Party of Pacheco and Caitu Silva and Independents like Avertano Furtado and Benjamin Silva. This is a part of its overall plan to work with minority leaders who have moved away from the Congress and claim to have their own areas of influence irrespective of their party affiliations. For instance, Mauvin Godinho does not need to wear a saffron dhoti and offer aarti at Rashtroli temple at Vadem, to visually communicate his cross religious beliefs. These acts are purely political and both Mauvin, his voters and the political class knows this. Similarly Babush Monserrate, who is now detached from the Congress, officially unattached by the Assembly speaker, and politically attached to the BJP, will be fielded by the BJP is a yet undecided capacity.
Thus, the decision to grant pardon to Mickky Pacheco has to be seen in the larger context of the BJP strategy of going into traditional bastions of the Congress through “outsourced” leaders as it did in 2012. While its Salcete boys – Caitu, Avertano Furtado, Benjamin Silva may have run out of political goodwill, they may still be the BJP’s best bet in the absence of its own party leaders. Mickky Pacheco therefore becomes, like Babush Monseratte, an important arrow in its quiver.
This strategy has also exposed another myth. Even as the BJP completes three and half years of its rule it has not managed to expand its base beyond its traditional pockets. The fact that it still has to depend on outsourced leaders to fight its battle in its weakest zones proves that its governance has not allowed its party to make enough inroads into these areas for its own leaders to emerge.
Which is why it needs to pardon the likes of Mickky Pacheco.
