So the Congress in Goa is looking for a President. As is the norm with the party, it wears the mask of a bottom up election process till it comes to picking the most important people for the most important posts. By deciding to ask its AICC president Sonia Gandhi to pick the next GPCC chief, is as good an indication that Shantaram Naik is a stop gap president, who was brought in for a specific purpose which never really materialised.
According to party insiders, Naik’s appointment was part of a package deal to bring in a compliant PCC chief, who would sit back and allow the internal and external fixers to try and execute a totally ambitious and far-fetched plan to topple the Parrikar government. A reluctant AICC gave a nod for this arrangement but made it very explicit in their letter appointing Naik as the PCC chief. It stated that the appointment was “as per the suggestion” of the Goa leadership.
Now, it will be the AICC which will handpick the new president. Therefore for all practical purposes the real successor to GPCC president Luizinho Faleiro will be chosen now. As we have maintained all through, Shantaram Naik’s tenure cannot be called a failure by any stretch of imagination. All that happened after the high of 17 seats and then the exit of Luzinho Faleiro, in circumstances which made it very difficult for him to continue, was that there was a hiatus. It almost seemed that the party was absorbing the shock of not being able to form a government. Therefore, there was no organisational strategy or a larger plan to take fresh positions and attack the ruling coalition. This lethargy affected the legislature party as well. In fact one minister in the Government said this rather piquantly “Honestly, after the manner in which this government was formed, we expected a very stormy first session the Assembly where we would be attacked from the word go and be accused of betraying the mandate. There were a few very faint whimpers but absolutely no attack”. This comment speaks volumes, in fact it says it all, of how lack lustre the party was and continues to be.
But Shantaram Naik was never the answer to these problems plaguing the party. And to be honest no one in the AICC had those expectations. He is a hardworking Congressman who played his role as a Rajya Sabha member with diligence. But he does have his limitations when it comes to leading a state organisation out of its morass.
As Naik tries to lobby to be able to continue in this position, the plain hard reality is that the Congress needs a fresh leadership. The fresh faces formula works as much in an organisational election as it does in picking candidates for Assembly elections. Even if the party opts for a total out of the box solution and gets in a relative green horn with the depth of intelligence and articulation with age on his or her side, it will do itself a huge favour. The party needs to be purged from within, because its strength of now 16 MLA’s is totally notional. If the Congress had one Mauvin Godinho in the last Assembly, it has perhaps four Mauvin Goudinhos this time, who sit on the Congress benches, but are “ruling” MLA’s in spirit.
Therefore it is only a big and substantial purge with a leadership which is willing to start from scratch and build a team for 2019 that will give the Congress hope, to still be a part of the battle.
