The Laxmikant Parsekar government is allegedly now involved in its latest project against public interest. Stifling the questions sought to be raised by the opposition in the forthcoming assembly session. While Independent MLA Vijai Sardesai and Congress MLA Alexio Reginaldo Lourenco have teamed up to raise the ante on what they feel are deliberate tactics to manipulate the draw of lots to prevent them from asking questions, the Congress in the assembly, is in surrender mode with not a squeak from the Leader of the Opposition Pratap Singh Rane.
But Sardesai and Reginaldo have made serious allegations and they need to be examined. The ruling party has been accused of remote controlling the legislative process, which should be under the absolute control of the Speaker and no one else. They have said that the draw of lots of asking questions have been so manipulated that ruling party MLAs have got the maximum chances to ask questions which will be absolutely soft in nature, thereby denying the likes of Sardesai, Lourenco, Rohan Khaunte and Naresh Sawal, the most well prepared of the opposition MLAs, to ask questions which will put the government in the dock.
The Speaker Rajendra Arlekar, needs to be above suspicion for the sake of democratic functioning. Since these charges are a direct attack on the neutrality of the functioning of the Speakers office, since he is the custodian of every activity that takes places within the assembly premises, he needs to respond to restore faith in the people’s belief in institutions like the Assembly.
If the Speaker is the undisputed authority of the Assembly, the people are the undisputed authority of the state. The assembly is a place of worship of democracy, it is also a court of justice and it remains the only place where the elected executives have to take the voice of the people to the government and force the government to respond and give solutions to grievances. If a Speaker of the assembly is charged with being incapable or even worse, being a tacit participant, in the process to subvert democracy, then a free and fair probe has to be ordered by the Speaker himself. This probe should be conducted by a committee of very senior MLAs cutting across party lines who should submit their report during the course of the assembly session, which should be debated on the floor of the House.
Neither the Speaker nor the ruling party should have any objection to this. They should rather welcome this if they are in the clear. But a debate is mandatory. After all, the charges of the government acting in connivance with the Assembly to stifle the questions of opposition MLAs cannot be a subject matter of press conferences alone. They have to dominate proceedings of the House.
The need for this government to answer people’s questions has never been greater. The Chief Minister hardly addresses issues with seriousness, the de-facto Chief Minister, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, the self appointed last word on all things Goan, has declared a maun vrat (vow of silence) with regard to speaking to the media, for six months and most other ministers are incapable of coherent expression. Therefore the stand of their departments on very contentious issues has to be either discussed or tabled in the House so that they become a matter of official record.
And then there are issues that need day long debates. Subjects like the golf course and Villa project in Tiracol of Leading Hotels, the marina projects at Sancoale and Nauxim, the opening of ODP’s, the absolute about turn on sending the Regional Plan to the people, the continuous spate of defeats the government has faced in front of the green court – National Green Tribunal, to name a few. If issues that dominate people’s lives and concerns are not discussed on the floor of the House, this Government will be making an absolute mockery of the assembly process. For this alone, they should be stripped off power post haste and told that its time to rule is well and truly up. Its continuance till 2017 is just a formality.
