So it’s January 17 now, when curtains will come down on the crazy uncertainty over what a party, which got drubbed in the last election, is actually doing. We have laid the cards on the table, called the Congress’ bluff and exposed the game plan of a section of the party, led by two senior leaders. Here’s a quick summary of how the Congress has grounded its own campaign and weakened the party for the next five years or more.
1) A cost benefit analysis of whether the Congress can cover lost ground by working with anti- BJP forces was not done. Conflicting statements emanated from various levels of leadership.
2) Young and young in heart and spirit leaders in villages and blocks were prepared to work with a new Congress. Even professionals from jurisprudence to media joined them, to create a new template for Goa. This template needed extensive travel and research and hiring a team of similar young professionals to seriously work on the template was needed. The process slowed down after the polls were declared.
3) The leadership of the party had often no clue what was happening in the party and the schemes and programs launched.
4) This as BJP went into high gear, the Congress lost the plot completely. The candidate selection has been done in the most adhoc arbitrary manner to merely check the right boxes.
5) The alliance was on the cards in the sense it was never “off”. However, why did the Congress not take all stakeholders into confidence, tough as it may, with two strong candidates.
6) With the lists will be finalised by January 17, the party gives absolutely no time for first time candidates to even get their nomination process right.
7) Most importantly, the Congress has failed, to involve all leaders together. There have been few conversations or exchanges but its entire leadership worked as mini Chief Ministers in their own areas, because of which there is no pan Goan leader in many of the political ranks.
And finally, and this is linked to all of the above, the Congress has not managed to take the mantra of organisation building as the leitmotif of its very existence. While the blocks have indeed been strengthened under Mr Luizinho Faleiro, the other ‘leaders’ like Rane and Digambar Kamat, did quite allow too much penetration into their own areas. The mantra of organisation building is to let your work take you forward. Or so the GPCC president thought. Now it is really sad to see that this mantra is not willing to be heard or practiced in a crumbling party with absolutely no direction except the individual ones of its leaders.
It looks to be very difficult for the Congress to lift itself up from this position and put up a good fight. If it does so, then miracles will have to work. It must immediately fix accountability and start preparations for Lok Sabha 2019. And that would mean fixing the organization by cleansing it of dead wood.
