It is not enough for the GPCC president Luizinho Faleiro to “repent” allowing off shore casinos in the Mandovi. While it takes rare political courage to admit to a mistake and repent, this cannot be Mr Faleiro’s individual regret.
During the Congress years of Digambar Kamat, when Mr Faleiro was largely handling Congress affairs in the North Eastern states, the nexus between the government and casino owners, and of some of its ministers with the drug lobby was a sordid chapter of the governments rule. When Mr Faleiro regretted the decision of the Congress to allow casinos on the Mandovi, he had the Leader of the opposition Mr Pratapsingh Rane sitting next to him. His government was the architect of allowing casino vessels to come in. There was absolutely no endorsement of Mr Faleiro’s regret from him.
Unfortunately none of the main political parties – the Congress and the BJP – have taken a serious consistent positioning on the issue of casinos in general and gambling in particular. The positioning is always dependent on the political exigency at that point of time. It suited then Leader of the opposition Manohar Parrikar to take a virulent anti casino line and threaten to storm the casino boats if they were not moved out of Goa’s waters. The same Mr Parrikar made a statement in the assembly that casinos are leading to the rise in pregnancies, though he never quite explicitly told us the link between the two. As we have argued and stressed this before, the tide changes every time the government does. A belligerent anti casino opposition leader becomes a lamb like ruling party tourism minister or Chief Minister. Mr Parrikar became exactly that. However, the Congress, after being in bed and boat with the casino barons could not quite do a U turn. For the casino owners, it was a win win.
The Congress was in no position to either challenge their presence. It was Ravi Naik who as Home Minister cleared the licences of many of the casinos, even though it is clear that each and every condition needed to be fulfilled before the licences were given, was not taken care of by all. But the boats remained, the casinos functioned and crores were spent and lost.
Both political parties turned to casinos for funds and it is no secret that election funds have been received by both political parties from casino owners and the revenue generated by them (in the absence of mining) paid many of the bills.
So when Mr Faleiro says “We did commit a mistake by bringing in off shore casinos and we repent for it. But now, we want to change the situation,” he must tell us how that change will happen. Goa will believe his party only when the GPCC passes a unanimous resolution to get the casinos out of Goa’s waters. Secondly, it must declare that neither the party nor any of its candidates will take a single paisa from casino owners for the 2017 election. Thirdly Mr Faleiro must declare (even though the likelihood of this is yet very remote) that his Chief Minister will take oath in 2017 only if Goa is free of all casinos. This and this alone will be evidence that Mr Faleiro’s utterances today are not empty rhetoric
Let’s look at this remark of the GPCC’s, “We are very concerned about the bad name the State is getting due to the casino issue. BJP in its election gave false promises of shifting these casinos out of River Mandovi but no efforts have been made in this regard for the past three and half years.” This again is hypocritical. The so called “bad name” was stamped on the state during the Congress government. The BJP merely maintained the tradition.
The Congress needs to understand that it’s difficult to distance itself from the ills of Goa and appropriate it to the BJP. When its own Home Minister was under a cloud and was named in a House committee which probed the nexus between politicians, police and the drug lobby, when prostitution and night clubs mushroomed in North Goa during the Congress rule and when casinos flourished also in that rule, it cannot quite jump off the boat of guilt by one expression of regret.
