While the Mopa juggernaut rolls on, Chief Minister Parrikar may have timed his remarks at Sindhudurg that the Mopa airport would boost tourism in Maharahstra, very poorly.
Admittedly, he was there on an election campaign with the Prime Minister next to his side. But did he need to use the Mopa pitch and emphasise that the airport would benefit tourism in this belt of Maharashtra when, the tourism industry of South Goa has been screaming that this would spell the death knell of tourism in their belt?
If politics is all about perception and timing, Manohar Parrikar should have learnt these attributes well. He chose to pick the very thorn in the flesh and use it to drive a further wedge between him and his South Goa constituents, who have all along maintained that the airport is being built not for Goa, but to sustain massive tourism and business investments being made in the Konkan belt of Maharashtra, adjoining the Mopa airport spot. He told the gathering at the public meeting that the airport at Chippi planned there is a small airport and he wanted to give a big airport at Mopa for their benefit.
Understandably development and growth cannot be restricted by geographical boundaries because they are national assets. But when you develop an asset like an airport at one corner of the state with an aim to benefit another state, to the detriment of your own, there is something not right. Either priorities are wrong or vested interests are playing a part.
Politically speaking, this speech of his has sent ripples through South Goa and given a much needed fresh fillip to the anti-Mopa activists. It has also started the race to get into the anti-Mopa public space with renewed vigour. Independent MLA Vijai Sardesai, has pressed the anti-Mopa pedal by claiming the space as his own, saying that the Mopa airport is a “joint venture” of the BJP and the Congress. He has sought to press the Congress weak link of its senior North Goa leaders like Pratapsing Rane backing the project.
Meanwhile sensing that the battle for the anti-Mopa space has begun, GPCC president Luizinho Faleiro, has upped the ante by displaying several letters he has written to both the government and party arguing against the Mopa airport project and demanding that the Dabolim airport should be expanded, to take care of future needs.
Sardesai feels that he will be able to move in this space more freely because he has no baggage. He doesn’t stand to gain from the airport in any manner, and his politics revolves around the anti-Mopa vote bank. Therefore his call for a referendum, always a catch phrase in South Goa will have takers.
Meanwhile the Independent MLAs supporting the government – also called the ‘altar boys’, will feel the pressure from their constituents after the Chief
Ministers Sindhudurg remarks, Sardesai has called for their resignations and recommended that they move to Sindhudurg. These MLAs are defending their indefensible as far as their voters are concerned. Not one of them – Avertano Furtdado, Caitu Silva, Benjamin Silva and even Mickky Pacheco, have any ammunition to quieten the deafening anti-Mopa noise that can be built up. And an opposition independent MLA like Sardesai will be ever ready to light a match to reignite the anti-Mopa fire.
For the Chief Minister, it’s a point of no return. On the Mopa issue, he has permanently lost South Goa. He had managed to keep the issue out of harms way during the assembly elections which he won, but has gone on to make it the single biggest focus of his government and politics. He is lucky that the opposition doesn’t quite have the political strength to take him on but all that could change if the people of South Goa get convinced that they are paying a price for catering to the development of Maharashtra, a state with which the people of South Goa, especially Salcete, has had historical linguistic and political differences.
