As the sixth session 2018 of the seventh Legislative Assembly of Goa begins later this week, it’s time to remind the Oath of Office that our Chief Minister and his Council of Ministers took when this Government was formed. The part of Oath that every Goenkar should remind his neighbourhood Minister comes from Schedule 3, Para 5 of the Constitution of India, “that I will faithfully and conscientiously discharge my duties as a Minister for the State of Goa and that I will do right to all manner of people in accordance with the Constitution and the law without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.” Somewhere between the pressures of holding onto forcibly seized power, holding together a largely diverse coalition and catering to crony capitalist that so much want this Government to survive and push their agenda, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and his team must be commended for holding on and putting up a brave face. However, Goenkar now want them to remember the oath they took and demand the land’s pound of flesh.
Governing Goa isn’t easy. And if anybody would know it best, it would be Parrikar himself. From engineering the collapse of a majority Govt in 1998 to being pulled down himself in 2005 to seizing power in 2017 without having the numbers, he has easily been Goa’s greatest survival artist. But that is where the admiration stops and the challenges arise. Holding 26 portfolios, including contentious ones of his coalition partners such as PWD, Power and Social Welfare when you are not in the best of your health, is definitely a brave task. But then will Parrikar be able to clean up these corruption ridden departments during the time he gets to spend with them? These monsoons have been horrendous due to PWD generated potholed roads (of substandard quality), flooding (due to poor engineering) or erratic power supply (due to a Minister who had other plans). Will Parrikar deliver there?
One of the greatest grouse that every Goenkar has with Parrikar is that he listens to his coterie, his partymen, his coalition partners, his businessmen favourites in Goa and outside. He and his Coalition Partners are neither accessible nor heeding to an average Goenkar. Let us face it that Parrikar is no Bhausaheb Bandodkar who would step out of his security cordon (Goa’s first CM never needed one) and be one with the crowd (from where Bandodkar rose up) but then he can always do those little things that an average Goenkar expects of him. If a migrant can get a job in amchem Goem if a non-Goan entrepreneur can seize opportunities in Goa why can’t Goenkars be promoted as much? Most importantly, why should this Government decide what is good for an average Goenkar than the people themselves? Parrikar needs to walk the talk on all those promises and that oath that he took.
While the CM battles between health and his own style of working, Goenkars seriously expect a fresh breath of air from the South-TCP & Agriculture Minister Vijai Sardesai. Sardesai in a sense complements Parrikar’s aggression in the North politics with his own in the South. And yes, he pulls no punches in holding back his viewpoint. But with a Goan electorate that has been betrayed again and again by its representatives in the past two decades, someone who talks tough (notice the similarities between Parrikar and Sardesai?) holds a lot of promise. When the Fatorda MLA steps into the portals of Vidhan Sabha later this week, he will be carrying an equally huge burden of people’s expectations and activists’ wrath. From TCP Act to RP 2021, Sardesai’s brush with Goa’s aspirations is as much if not more than that Goa has from Parrikar. This Assembly, people will be watching him closely too.
The forthcoming Assembly session will be an acid test for Goa’s democracy. We are a State where a Cabinet Advisory Committee happened for the first time, an unwell Chief Minister ruled us remotely, the civil society raised dozens of flags at regular intervals yet the people prayed with baited breath for a miracle to happen. The people would be watching this session again on live television coverage, on social media debates, on WhatsApp forwards, in newspapers columns. Only this time the voices of Goa will be advocates not followers of democracy, taking notes and exchanging them.
