When a minister is about to go to jail for slapping a ‘lowly” junior engineer, it should normally be a time to rejoice in our democracy, its rule of law and its canvas of neutrality. It should also, in this case, be time to recognize the crusade of a lawyer activist, who jumped to the aid of the Junior engineer who even in his wildest dreams did not fathom that a slap on his cheek would have landed a minister in jail. And in the case of Mickky Pacheco versus Aires Rodrigues- because that is exactly what this is with the Junior engineer Kapil Natekar a mere footnote in the script- it also about a comeback through the judiciary.
But is this case the pinnacle of the victory of right over wrong, of the meek over the powerful, of the victim over the victimizer? Or is this about political opponents seizing the opportunity, helped by compromised pillars of democracy to deliver the right justice for wrong vested interests? Even if punishment to a powerful minister is the right end, does it make the end right if the punishment was forced by the hands of those who were seeking political revenge against Mickky Pacheco and not justice for Kapil Natekar? There are no easy answers to the questions but in the nature of the questions lie clues to the answers.
Ever since the Supreme Court upheld the punishment against the Rural Development Minister, thus making it imperative for him to go to jail, there hasn’t quite been an euphoric response from the public of Goa, happy at the decision. The vindication claim has been made by those who pushed this case, and not by the people at large. While this does not justify or call for his freedom, or cast any doubts at the judiciary, it indicates that the people of Goa, have got tired of waiting for the corrupt, violent, powerful people of the political, bureaucrat and police class to go behind bars for the collective loot of the state treasury and the hard earned earnings of the public. And when they do not get touched and Pacheco does for slapping an engineer, this becomes relative. It becomes an assessment of the ratio of crime and punishment and not about whether a powerful Pacheco should go to jail.
Comparisons are made with information buried in the sub conscious. Here was a Minister caught with wads of cash before boarding an international flight, here was a Minister who burnt a police station, here was a Minister who presided over a department where road works were ordered and kickbacks taken without even the money spent for the work, here was a minister who has usurped large amount of communidade land and made them into his properties, here is a minister who gets off one international flight and plans another, at our expense of course, ostensibly to promote Goa’s tourism. It is when these are weighed against what Pacheco’s acts of commission are, a serious re-look is needed.
In all fairness it must also be said Pacheco himself has thus far escaped trial and possible punishment for other cases, but his punishment in this case, held against the stuff for which the powerful are still out, makes Pacheco a bit of an unlucky victim and not a criminal, someone who seems to have received the wrong end of the luck of the draw. We all remember his arrest for his alleged abetment of the suicide of his “friend’ Nadia Torrado. Everyone close to the case has concluded that he was victimized by political interests whose orders were complied by a plaint official force.
Democracy is as strange as life. As one politician Pacheco goes down as the law catches up, it is not the system which wins, but another powerful force driver of the present system.
