While Goa had the good fortune of having had educated Chief Ministers, the same cannot be said of the Ministers, and the irony of it all was that we had an Education Minister, with hardly any education. Apart from education, perhaps even more important are integrity, morality and character. Sad that many of our elected representatives may not stand the test of either.
People holding exalted positions like the Chief Minister, Ministers, Speaker, etc, must uphold the dignity and honour of the posts they occupy. While they should speak their mind, they need to hold their tongues to avoid unnecessary controversies, hurt people and instigate one community against another or the authorities against citizens.
Our Chief Minister had, some years back, while he was the Speaker of the House, shown his true colours, by indirectly hitting at the two minority communities in Goa, without any provocation. Recently, while inaugurating Colvale station, the Chief Minister slammed the Opposition for “unnecessarily disturbing the people” and instigated the police to crackdown on their critics. “Everyone should be shown their place by the police. I have seen some people from political parties blaming the police… What do they think of themselves? I feel police need to show them their place,” he fumed. Does it behoove of the CM of a State to incite the Police to act against its citizens? There has been much criticism of the Police on the law and order, which surely leave much to be desired. Thankfully, the Police in Goa are much more cultured than their counterparts in some other States or else they might have acted brutally, having carte blanche from their boss. Are we to believe that the PI of Valpoi, who walked over the chest of a lady protestor in Melauli, did so under instructions or tacit approval from his top chief, Goa’s Home Minister? This question also arises because, despite the video of this incident going viral, there was no known action on this most undignified and uncouth behaviour of the Police Officer.
The next day, the CM went on to accuse the Opposition of maligning the State’s image at the national level over Covid management and hoped that the people of Goa will teach the slandering politicians a lesson. Leave alone his wishful thinking, the CM is surely making a mockery of people’s emotions if he thinks that they will so easily forget what they went through in the last two months due to complete mismanagement of Covid situation by the Government. And the PR exercise now initiated by BJP is to undo the sinking image of the party.
Goa hit the headlines not alone because of the heavy spike, but also because 75 deaths in a single day, of which 26 in early hours, due to lack of oxygen were serious and enormous for the size of our State – the smallest in the country. Foreign Press, including New York Times, and national dailies and TV channels referred to this unprecedented occurrence. Goa’s own Health Minister acknowledged to CNN that failure to close the borders was the likely cause for the spike. And here, he was spot on as even the High Court felt that way and directed that travellers to Goa needed Covid negative certificate. Far from humbly accepting his blunder, the CM persisted in his mistake by appealing to HC to reverse the order, but got a snub in return.
By blaming the Opposition for bad publicity, the CM cannot escape from the collective and individual responsibility for the sad Covid scenario we faced, particularly due to leaving the borders open and the faux pas in allotting the supply of oxygen to a single contractor.
Lives lost cannot be retrieved and the pain of those who went through the agony and trauma of losing their loved ones can only be measured by stepping into their shoes. We are all human and liable to make mistakes. However, it takes much humility and the honesty of a gentleman to meekly accept our faults. Arrogance and passing the buck, when we know where the fault lies, will only deepen the wounds and lessen the possibility of forgiveness.
Our CM belongs to a cadre, in whose vocabulary, unfortunately, humility, democracy and tolerance do not seem to exist. Hence, the anger against criticism. These signs are ubiquitous in the country. Arrests under UAPA have become common during BJP regime with 1182 cases in 2018 alone, mostly in UP, J&K, Jarkhand, Assam and Manipur. Apparently, UAPA was introduced to do away with the colonial relic of sedition in IPC. But it did not happen and it has helped the BJP to use both to scuttle opposition, protests and to silence detractors. In January 2020, more than 3,000 protesters against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and in 2019, more than 3,300 farmers for protesting about land disputes, were charged with sedition. Fortunately, Goa has, so far, been spared from the use of these draconian laws. Though thousands of arrests have been effected under these laws, the conviction rate has been extremely low, hardly 2%. The death of Fr Stan Swamy has brought to the fore the injustice meted out to him and similar prisoners, who are denied bail for months and years and languish without trial. In Goa, the Government has received several setbacks due to adverse Court orders. It would do well not to try people’s and Court’s patience by compelling the former to resort to unnecessary and expensive judicial processes.
(The author is a retired banker)
