Dear Mr Parrikar, time for a reality check. The Monsoon Session is over and so is our blind date with what you call governance.
Years ago it was during your regime that Goans started dreaming of the perfect State led by the perfect leader. An IIT-ian, who wanted to bring in development, who wanted to make Goa another Singapore. What people didn’t understand was that perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas. Lee Kuan Yew, the founding Prime Minister of Singapore was a perfectionist too but his perfection was in governance, in purpose, in principles.
From the moment you brought down a perfect majority led by the Congress and then assumed Chief Ministership, horse trading and musical chairs became the new normal. In fact, you shall be happy to know that ever after Goa and Goans always knew that if you were in power nobody could bring down your government because you had a file on everyone and if you were in the Opposition any other government could be brought down by money muscle.
This Monsoon Session, Dear Mr Chief Minister, you brought in the rains of humiliation on the people of Goa. Many of whom (despite disliking your style of functioning) had prayed for your well-being. Goans, who had seen hope and transparency in your tough-talking ways, found out that it was a mask. The way you let your brother in arms destroy the idea of Goa by putting a price to every field, every patch of water with the TDR or allowed the planned plunder of Goan lands with the new R & R Act and even took pains to clear up the coalition between the fish mafia and your coalition partners and as we see in pictures your own partymen, leaves Goa wondering if people even do count in democracy? And do we need to remind you of your senior partyman in whose factory ketamine was found but then you have no problem with it?
The Opposition (Congress) in Goa, we long knew, has been your government’s partner in all deeds. But the finesse with which you made them a part of your ruling coalition even though your party was down by a fifth of its MLAs speaks volumes of your political survivability. But is that what politics is all about? Don’t the people who vote for you and your colleagues have any stake in the State’s decision? Don’t the people who vote for their representative also invest in a thought process, an ideology? Are people not voting for law-abiding, law upholding lawmakers? With you leading the charge and tirade against the Supreme Court’s decision in mining or NGT’s decision in Mopa and score of other outbursts, please remember the fact that Goa and Goans still believe and trust the Constitution of India and the idea of India in the same vein as Goem, Goenkar and Goenkarponn. No Sir, we never gave the mandate to you to insult our courts, our laws, our lands and yes, our society.
Your government insults the idea of free press and investigations into your failed governance by mocking it in the safety of legislative privileges, restricting movement of journalists and coercing media houses who don’t mind scrutiny on one hand and send your PR team to build bridges and beg for fairness in the elections on the other hand. Listen to those many voices of Goa, they shall tell you “One man with a dream, at pleasure / Shall go forth and conquer a crown / And three with a new song’s measure / Can trample an empire down”. Goa deserves respect, not an embarrassment called your government.
