A political party is based on a certain ideology and is meant to have members who subscribe to the same principles and thoughts. It is no secret that in the past few years ideology is what has been least on the minds of politicians as they have skipped parties, jumping from one to another just as long as they can prolong their political careers and continue to remain in positions of power. The past few weeks there have been many such changes of parties by politicians. Two Congressmen – Mauvin Godinho and Pandurang Madkaikar – left the party and joined BJP. Francisco (Mickky) Pacheco left the Goa Vikas Party and joined Goa Su-Raj Party, Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate, Vijai Sardesai floated their own parties, Ramesh Tawadkar quit BJP to contest as an Independent.
While all this is hardly astonishing in Goan politics, especially in the run-up to an election, it is the BJP State Unit President’s statement that a person’s ability to win an election is more important than ideology when considering suitable candidates for the party, which puts a different perspective to the issue. The BJP, he said, denied tickets to two MLAs because a party survey showed that the two politicians did not have the possibility of winning in the constituencies that they represented in the past five years. What he did not say, is why their winning ability in the constituencies had diminished. Was it the lack of local development, or was it just an anti-incumbency factor that had set in. He, however, went on to say that the party does keep ideology in mind, but that the new imports to the party, one must assume this includes the two from the Congress, had better chances of winning the elections and so they were selected over the party members.
It is not just the BJP that has been giving tickets to ‘winnable’ candidates, the Congress too is guilty of the same. Just hours before the deadline to file nominations, the party was still unsure whether it was going to field candidates in certain seats or it would keep away, with the AICC General Secretary in-charge of Goa saying that in case there is no suitable candidate they will support a candidate of another party or an Independent so as to defeat the BJP. If the aim of a political party is merely to defeat another party, where does governance and ideology come into the picture?
The tragedy of Goan politics, the constant changing of parties by politicians as they try whatever means possible to gain and then cling on to power, has been the result of an utter lack of ideology on their part. For public consumption the politician joining a new party states that his change of allegiance is for the development of his constituency and of the State, but the motives are widely known to be purely for personal gains. While that doesn’t fool anyone, the bigger tragedy is that a large number of voters continue to elect the same persons despite their changing parties, sending them back to the Assembly term after term, which leads to the politician developing a false bravado of invincibility.
A political party enters an election race to win, so does a politician. But there has to be at least some amount of ideology, a programme, a promise. One candidate in Fatorda, playing extremely safe, filed two sets of nomination papers, one each as a nominee of a different party. If both are found to be in order, he can then decide which one to withdraw and then be on the ballot as the candidate of the party of his choice. When something like this happens there is scant respect shown to the electorate. Goa can change that by voting for persons of principles this election.
