It will be South Goa’s ultimate misfortune if the groundswell of hurt against the pushing of the Mopa airport, at the ultimate cost of Dabolim does not channelise into an effective movement. At this point of time, a priest and a politician have entered into the anti-Mopa leadership space, which they plan to claim as their own.
Churchill Alemao-arguably and clearly with political intent and nothing else- sees the anti-Mopa movement as the spark which can light the entire agitation against the BJP rule. He wishes this spark to light the path of his own political resurrection which needs an emotive energy to pull him out of his political wilderness. He has always used the anti-Mopa cause to take himself out of political trouble or neglect. Veteran political watchers will remember that he used this cause immediately after being trapped in a sting operation where he reportedly assured TV reporters pretending to be NGO representatives he would release funds from the MPLAD scheme to them, in lieu of kickbacks in the form of “commissions”. Alemao announced a huge agitation against the Mopa airport soon after. Having said that, it is also clear that he is the only politician who has not wavered from the fact that the Mopa airport cannot be built and Dabolim needs to function as Goa’s only airport. Alemao does not have the wherewithal to go into reports, feasibility studies or EIA’s. That is why his opposition perhaps still retains an air of genuineness, even if it has a political motive.
Therefore when he has upped the ante again, on the heels of the Goa For Dabolim Only movement led by Father Eremito Rebello, he seems more willing to include the priest and work with him. However Father Eremito Rebello is firm on the GFDO being a one hundred percent apolitical movement, without getting even a whiff of politics and politicians. As a result of this firm- and some would say childishly rigid- stand, he sought to delink the GFDO from Churchill Alemao’s anti-Mopa rally on May Day. Fr Rebello demands that Churchill should declare that he has no intention of contesting the 2017 elections if he wants the GFDO to align with him.
The reason why this path of Father Rebello is self defeating for Goa, especially South Goa, needs to be understood. For Father Eremito, Churchill Alemao’s political ambitions cannot come in the way of channelizing a mass movement against Mopa, on a scale that the GFDO has not managed to achieve. Any mass movement needs the masses. One of the few remaining leaders who still can, for the right reasons or wrong, inject the fuel of numbers into a movement, is Alemao. The well intentioned Father Rebello is also missing the fact that a non-political movement in its pure form is virtually impossible in Goa. From the Opinion poll to the language agitation to every major movement against industrial projects, there has been a political party backing it, mainly against the then ruling dispensation. The GFDO need not subsume itself into Alemao’s formation. It should ally with any political or social group espousing the same cause, even if the motives may vary.
If Father Eremito’s intentions are not political, he should have no discomfort in taking along another political force which could potentially help him achieve his altruistic motive of freeing, at least South Goa, from the clutches of the Mopa airport. It shouldn’t matter to him or the GFDO if Alemao’s political ambitions get a fillip as long as the anti-Mopa cause is strengthened. When the GFDO treats an Alemao like a competitor and not an ally, it runs the risk of facing allegations of being equally ambitious. And let’s remember Alemao doesn’t have to be defensive about being politically ambitious. Life is politics and politics is his life. Not so for Father Rebello.
If the anti-Mopa movement needs to take flight, it has to be based on the ‘more the merrier principle’ rather than the solo flight approach of the priest.
