The Migration Season seems to have begun early this political season as Yuri Alemao follows the family tradition of party hopping and completed the leap of faith from Nationalist Congress Party to Goa Forward Party. Elsewhere former UGDP turned BJP turned NCP turned GVP MLA Mickey Pacheco has announced a comeback to UGDP but the party is yet to confirm. And as the sick leave of Chief Minister, wannabe Chief Minister, would-have-been Chief Minister et al continue to get extended indefinitely, the murmurings are clear. Your friendly neighbourhood politician might be just readying himself secretively for a mid-term poll.
The signs are too obvious. All this buzz at the Centre by ruling BJP (please don’t forget that the ever-ambitious GFP and the power-broking MGP in Goa are their coalition partners) demanding simultaneous polls at the Centre and in the States might have a method to its madness. Goa’s only Union Minister at the Centre, Shripad Naik admitting that “There are five States which will go to elections along with the Lok Sabha. But if another two or three States that have elections in near future are clubbed together then, about 11 States would simultaneously go for elections with the Lok Sabha”, is a cue too obvious to be forgotten. Typically, despite the State’s Unemployed standing at 7.8% of the population and the unemployment rate standing at 9.67%, youth from BJP Yuva Morcha had the time to burn an effigy of Congress leader and Punjab State Minister Navjot Singh Siddhu. The priorities are no more people but polls.
The monsoon session of Goa Assembly in hindsight seems to be a calculated push of all that the current ruling dispensation wanted to do with Goa. From steamrolling support for illicit mining to regularising a formalin laced fishing mafia by a cold calculated Govt inaction to pushing forth a draconian TDR amendment to TCP Act – the list of endless, mindless attack on encashing every inch of Goan soil in the name of development was but a desperate agenda to milk the economy dry. Where are the elected representatives in the State Assembly besides recuperating from illness – party building, electoral prepping and jet-setting when ordinary Goans need them?
The ruling BJP is paying its price for centralising mandate within one man – all in the name of consolidation. Despite the bravado in the name of a steadying economy, the party cadres are in a state of disarray as the man who held them together battles to hold on to his own health. For the first time from the ranks and file of BJP expressions such as “why do we have to desperately hold on to power if we don’t have money to pay” to “our coalition partners dance of greed and corruption is an embarrassment” seem to be slipping out as the master craftsmen who made a second consecutive BJP term possible in the state is conspicuous by its absence. BJP is Manohar Parrikar in Goa and this is when it becoming most obvious.
Interestingly, even the Congress that came to an almost touching distance of power in 2017 seems to be in no hurry. The party is focusing on rebuilding its party structure that was completely lost in the Shantaram Naik era. The party is also carefully monitoring the older generation of formidable Congressmen – their actions and inactions. So is there just a spring cleaning in the offing or a party readying for a comeback? Only time would tell that.
The big story in this hour for the Goans is the fact that there is another legislative term getting wasted away as our politicians languish between hospital beds and anti-Goan agenda. This is a Govt absolutely detached from the people and proving itself as the Government that we never elected to lead Goa.
