Each one of them returned with a new zeal. The people of Goa did not get out of jail on Saturday evening. They broke the barriers of freedom to welcome a new people centric political dawn.
No, they did not go to jail, for protesting peacefully and fighting for Justice for Father Bismarque. But the manner in which Parsekar’s police force unleashed all its power on ordinary Goans has ensured that the people of Goa will do all it can to lock this government up and keep it in solitary confinement for an indefinite term.
Hubris has blinded this Goa BJP government’s common sense. No mature politician would have dealt with this people’s protest movement in such a crass and immature manner. The party was caught completely napping with no intelligence gathered on the extent and the profile of the uprising against the manner in which the Goa police has been handling the investigation into Father Bismarque’s death. It was happy in the belief that a handful of activists would make it to the Mandovi banks and would be picked up and carted away. When they saw that that the trickle would be a flood and the waters would contain the elderly, the infirm and even the sick, they did not retract and re-strategise. The policemen blind to reality and with ears open only to listen to commands without questioning, did not sense that this was a different flood. People left their balcaos and their tintos, their shopping and their chats to come to Panjim for this. In a sense this protest movement became larger than its stated objective of Justice for Bismarque. In the narrative of injustice towards the activist priest, lies the even bigger script of people’s anger and frustration against a government which has become people un-friendly. And the manner in which simple elderly people were treated, has made the government seem like a die-hard enemy of the people.
The BJP and the government lost on Saturday. The people did not. If you were on the streets of Panjim or in the police stations of Anjuna and Porvorim, you could see the tectonic people’s shift. Disappointment with the chasm between promise and delivery of this government, was turning to a blatant rage against a dispensation which hurts the dignity of its people, with a degree of indecency never seen in Goa. Fatorda MLA Vijai Sardesai who aspires to control the people space in the future said that the BJP has imposed an emergency in Goa. However, what changed on Goa’s streets on this Saturday evening was immense. People declared freedom from fear. And with this declaration came the rejection of any kind of political imposition.
The skeptics, or the ones who are brainwashed, might well say that the anger of 300 protestors cannot change the numbers in an election which is a year away. They do not know that numbers are notional in a State which is enveloped in the spirit of change fuelled by the energy of people’s anger which wants it to happen.
Sat November 21, could well be the game changer for 2017.
