The result that the Goan electorate threw up confirmed the theories of winnability that the national parties BJP and Congress swore by, in their choice of candidates. Across the State, those who were declared elected were those who the parties believed were winnable, and for exactly that reason they were selected as candidates, ignoring all other criteria of qualification and ability.
And now, in an Assembly that is totally hung and with little hope of a stable government and therefore all indications of an early poll, the next few months will be crucial. Though Goa will have a new government, (the swearing in ceremony is scheduled for this evening), the disparate nature of the parties that have little in common does not foretell that it can survive five years. There is already speculation of a mid-term election, and outgoing Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar voiced this possibility on the day the results came in.
The result, though it may have surprised many was rather predictable and always a possibility. In the run-up to the polls, Herald had already predicted that the mood in the villages of Goa was in favour of change and leaning towards the Congress. The result also confirmed speculation of five years ago when BJP had won 21 seats – a majority on its own – that the 2012 result was a defeat of the Congress rather than a victory of the BJP. BJP has got far fewer seats than the Congress, a result that the party never thought possible after its 2012 showing and the flurry of schemes that it wooed the people with. By bringing back Congress, reposing faith in a party that did little to inspire confidence, the electorate sent the message that the Congress should have had time to atone and change, but the electorate still did not give it a complete majority of 21 seats that would allow it to form a government by itself.
Yet, the party managed to make a comeback that few had actually dreamt possible. It has garnered 28.4 percent of the vote and won 17 seats, and while the percentage is far less than what it got five years ago, the number of seats is almost double of what it got in 2012. And while Congress had its task cutout for it, to justify by deeds, over the next few months and years, the confidence that the electorate has reposed in it, it failed in the very first test of government formation. Now, as the single largest party it will sit in the Opposition for another term, while the loose coalition of parties that has been formed will lead the State.
But here in this game of government formation, when parties set aside their ideology to come together, the winnability factor takes a beating. While it benefits the parties and gets them seats, it does not give the electorate any benefit, which perhaps is the reason why Goa saw the highest percentage of NOTA votes polled in this election, which stood at 1.2 percent.
One needs only to look at the results of the previous two elections of 2007 and 2012 and then of 2017 to learn that the electorate had already made it clear that Congress and the BJP are the main players in the Goan political arena, and that between them they will get three-fourths of the seats in the Assembly. In the previous two elections the vote share of the Congress and the BJP was in the 30 percentage points. Congress from a vote share of 32.25 percent in 2007 dropped to 30.78 percent in 2012, while BJP managed to increase its share from 30.32 in 2007 to 34.68 in 2012 and gain a simple majority in the Assembly. In the same period MGP, that has been a consistent factor in every Goan election, saw it vote share fall from 8.65 percent in 2007 to 6.72 percent in 2012 though it managed to increase its seats to three from the two it held earlier. In 2017, BJP and Congress saw their vote share fall to 32.5 percent and 28.4 percent respectively, while MGP saw an increase in it vote share going up to 11.3 percent for its three seats.
A factor that could have contributed to the fall of the Congress vote share is that it did not contest this election in alliance with the NCP, so lost out on a number of votes it might have otherwise got. On the other hand, the MGP contested far more seats this time which could have factored in the increase in vote share.
In all three elections, it is the other smaller parties and the Independents that got a share in the high 20s. In 2007 the others had a vote share of 37.43, with eight seats (3NCP + 2 MGP + 2 SGF + 2 Independents + 1 UGDP) that dropped marginally five years later to 34.54, retaining the number of seats they held in the Assembly, which came to 10 (5 Independents + 2 GVP + 3 MGP). In 2017, the number of seats that the other parties and independents have got remains at 10, and the vote percentage has remained stagnant at 34.9.
In 2012 the people voted for five Independents and five regional party MLAs, which is 25 percent of the strength of the Assembly. The same result has come in this time. The percentage vote share that the Independents and all regional parties pulled was approximately 30 percent, which is almost equal to what the Congress had received for the nine seats it won, without counting the vote share of its then alliance partner NCP. It’s a repeat this time.
So not much has changed as to the pattern of voting, though the number of seats the parties have won has differed. In that sense it’s a predictable result and it’s the 2012 statistics, more than anything else, that made this result not so unpredictable.
(Alexandre Moniz Barbosa is Executive Editor, Herald)
