Atanasio Monserrate is one of those purely opportunistic players in the field of Goa’s real politic – who parades as a politician. If politics is about the conception, birth, life and rejuvenation of people, the root of the spirit of polity, Babush Monserrate is an absolute misfit. But if polity is about power and gamesmanship and manipulation of the political system, he is a master. And if that is called real politic, he is the Grandmaster of this chess game.
He evokes no surprise when he is never the puppet on a string in his relationship with any party he lends his name to. He is the string and he holds it. His party is always the puppet. He has pulled the rug from the Congress and the BJP, he has switched sides and changed colours making even a chameleon blush. The party always falls in line.
When the Congress was trounced in 2012 with the politics of family raj the main reason for the party’s defeat, Monserrate and his wife managed to win their seats, with a husband-wife duo making up 2 of the 9 member Congress Legislature Party. He has ruled Panjim’s municipal body by managing to break the BJP stranglehold and install his own Mayor whom he has vowed to now defeat in the Panjim by poll. The same man who was fit to head his panel of CCP corporators will have to face the prospect of his former benefactor telling his men to ensure that their Mayor gets defeated in the assembly poll. And Monseratte is doing this for no other interest than his own. If Mr Furtado was content with serving out his term as Mayor, Monserrate would have been fine. But Furtado has desired to dream more than he can be allowed to in the land of Monserrate. Monserrate wants Panjim for himself and if a Congress MLA wins by chance, then his route gets blocked. He therefore strategized and announced that he would contest himself creating panic in the ranks of the Congress. When the GPCC went ahead and announced Furtado’s name, he said that even a peon of the BJP would win the elections, if he (Monseratte) did not contest.
And as he says now that he will not back the Congress and support the BJP instead, it should surprise no one. Apart from wanting to be the next Panjim MLA (in 2017) Monserrate cannot antagonise the BJP with a series of legal tangles that he is involved in, including the impending Panjim police station attack case. He is the best judge of the political weather and he has decided that BJP is his best protection against inclement weather round the corner.
Yet again, it should surprise no one that the Congress finds itself helpless in taking any action against him because expelling him will lead to the Congress losing one MLA and possibly two with his wife too quitting.
No lessons have been learnt after the rout in 2012. People like Babush Monserrate, keep the Congress at their mercy and not the other way round, in an eco system where powerful individuals tower over their parties, like giants over pigmies.
Babush Monserrate is doing exactly that. Using and throwing the Congress like toilet paper.
