“We are not against casinos”, in one stroke he managed to cause more damage to the party’s attempt at taking a hardline against casinos than any other party ever could. It must have been particularly embarrassing for the GPCC president Luizinho Faleiro, who had done the impossible, actually apologise for the Congress having encouraged the casino industry to flourish in the state. The GPCC president’s clear stated stand on the issue, totally contradicts its AICC desk in-charge Digvijay Singh’s remarks that they need to be moved out of the Mandovi, with a rider that the Congress is not against casinos.
In true television style, let us play back Mr Faleiro’s earlier statements on casinos, “The proliferation of casinos has turned Goa into a ‘sin city’. Successive governments including those of the Congress party are responsible for turning the state into a gambling hub” Moreover Digvijay Singh’s comments virtually trashes a resolution passed by the Goa State Executive committee of the Congress, in October 2015, to conduct a debate on casinos, after which the party would take a formal decision on whether doing away with the gambling industry would form one of the main poll planks of the party’s 2017 assembly election campaign. Party workers would deliberate on the issue. The final decision on casinos was supposed to be taken after two weeks. There is no evidence of either a debate or a deliberation being conducted or a “final decision” taken.
There was no ambiguity on the part of the GPCC president, Mr Faleiro though. His most telling comment was, “Successive governments including those of the Congress and the BJP and another (Goa People’s Congress-led coalition government) had promoted casinos, thinking it would help tourism. But casinos have now turned Goa into a sin city, a place of vice. The casinos have ruined Goa’s reputation,” This hasn’t seemed to echo with Digvijay Singh though. What Mr Faleiro said in October 2015 has been dwarfed by Mr Digvijay Singh’s remarks on Saturday, August 27, 2016. He said, “We are not against casinos. But as far as our stand is concerned, they will have to move out from Mandovi River. It has to be decided how far they will move away from the coast”. This makes the Congress’ stand even more lenient than the BJP’s which at least said that they will have to move to the high seas. It’s another matter that precious little has been done to actually get them there.
With the AICC’s representative, absolutely fine with casinos remaining in the territorial waters of the state, does this remark of the GPCC president now have any value? “Shutting down casinos will affect the government revenue in the short term but this ill-gotten wealth has a big price attached to it in the form of social decay and disruption of Goa’s image,”
Clearly the AICC desk in-charge has made his state unit’s task of explaining the party’s casinos stand a lot more difficult and strengthens the belief that when it comes to the casinos industry, no party can afford to (and that’s the operative word) alienate them, in an election year.
