Despite global warming, weather in Goa this winter is cooler than normal, due to the La Nina effect, it is said. Nights are cold, mornings foggy. But global warming appears to have unsettled the politics here. The heat is climbing to unprecedented heights. Thunder rumbles as lightning strikes unexpectedly, seemingly at random, sometimes targets the same place twice, with Congress being the main sufferer. The BJP too has not escaped. Newcomers like TMC are on the upsurge. Even AAP is making an effort. And GSRP is hovering around the horizon, like the midnight sun, in the Arctic Circle in winter.
Congress has been hit real hard and in the words of a BJP functionary Congress was “first reduced to a Nano car, then to a rickshaw and finally to a cycle”. And it indeed is so. Actually, it does look like the Congress may soon be a unicycle and eventually, turn into the rim, of a cycle wheel!
It was not too long ago that a Congress ticket meant assured victory, anywhere in Goa. And there was a huge clamour for it. The Congress, however, has lost its way and today there are constituencies where Congress tickets go abegging. Even Congress sitting MLAs are refusing the party tickets, when offered! The final nail in the coffin is the departure of Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco who for the last decade was the public face of the party, the man who consistently and vehemently opposed the anti-people policies of the govt while senior Congress leaders connived with it for personal gain or were coerced into silence. No one can dispute that Reginaldo was short charged by the party and never rewarded for his good work. He would bitterly complain how on his trips to Delhi he had to wait for a week or more, to meet the party President and even when suggestions made were never considered. Disgusted, Reginaldo has left the Congress, and joined the TMC whose leader Mamata Banerjee likewise had broken away from the Congress, for similar reasons. She is now emerging as the real challenger to the BJP and is the focus of national opposition unity.
The reasons for the decline of the Congress are not too difficult to discern. The Congress has long ceased to be a party with an ideology based cadre. It has degenerated into a confederation of lumpen elements, each out to promote personal interests and distribute favours, in exchange for electoral support. And, when they depart their hangars on follow them, as they owe no allegiance to the party. The Congress is thus left stranded and compelled to field candidates with “win-ability” and not ideological compatibility. These fly by night operators take off and land where they choose, in times of turbulence. As happened after the last polls.
The pathetic plight of the Congress is evident on its line of campaign where it is insistently harping on “split vote benefitting the BJP” as if the entire non BJP vote is its private preserve. Why does the Grand Old Party not reorganise itself on ideological lines and go to the masses with committed candidates? Has it not had a decade to do so?
Let us now look at the Congress record on the “split vote factor”. The elections in West Bengal last May, were fought hard between the TMC (ruling party) and the BJP. Did the Congress back the TMC? Did it not in alliance with the Left Front join the fray and lose its deposit in every seat? Why did it not think that its presence will split the vote and help the BJP? Did the voter not ignore the Congress and support the TMC to defeat the BJP? Or take Uttar Pradesh where the Samajwadi Party has emerged as the real challenger to the BJP. The Congress is languishing in the backwoods. But has it not said it will contest all seats? Is it not campaigning at full throttle under the leadership of Priyanka Vadra? Will there be no vote split in UP? Why then the spilt vote bogey, only in Goa?
The majority of the voters, as I so often point out may be dishonest which also may be the main cause for the dismal politics, we are witness to. But it does not follow that being dishonest also makes the voters foolish. The record shows that when the voters determine that a dispensation has to be voted out, the vote through a process yet to be deciphered gravitates towards the party most likely to win. It happened in 1977 when the Janata Party routed the Congress. And in West Bengal last May when TMC cleaned up the BJP. And in so many other States in between. And the portents are it could happen in Goa, early next year.
The Congress is no more perceived as a likely winner, even by its own leaders who thus are abandoning the sinking ship, sometimes even without a lifejacket! Such desertions take place only when the situation is desperate. And the voters are keenly watching. Among those who have seen the Congress ship flounder amidst rough seas and jumped in to offer an alternate vessel, the front runner as of now, is the TMC with the AAP quite some distance behind. The GSRP is an unknown quality and quantity and its ability in such rough weather is not yet known. But it does have some hardy and experienced crew members, who have faced and survived even rougher weather in real life. It is still too early to foresee the likely scenario but at the moment TMC is leading the charge to challenge the BJP. It may take a few more weeks for the haze to clear.
(Radharao F. Gracias is a senior Trial Court Advocate and a former
Independent MLA)
