Goa Congress – Knock knock, anyone there?
As the Congress woke up to a severe indictment by the Herald, on its party mess and the absolute indifference of its mess monger leaders, its reactions were pretty predictable. No one mourned the erosion of the party, no one hung his head in shame for the caricature of its self the Congress has become and again no one really has anything to say about the splinter groups which officially thought they belonged to this party.
The biggest hurt that you can cause a fellow being is absolute indifference. That can happen to a party too. The tragedy that has befallen the Congress is that its own party men are indifferent to the party. Every reaction or a murmur of protest from leaders including MLA’s at the Herald story on page one of our Saturday Edition, THE GREAT GOA CONG-MESS, was one of personal hurt. They went like this “ I am devoting time, almost four to five hours, but some of the bl**dy leaders who have looted the party don’t even give a rupee to the party fund”. Hear another one “You were right, they are s**t scared of Parrikar and they are busy hiding their black money” and one more leader said “ Who cares, I’m leading my own life, don’t drag me in because I’m least interested in this party”
If there was a prize for the fastest ever snap poll or a survey about the party’s mood, this one would get it for speed, and accuracy. The sample size may be three but it holds good for multiples of 300. The GPCC may have reshuffled spokesman, filed a petition with the SP North Goa against Pramod Muthalik and demanded the resignation of Power Minister Milind Naik, but the core of the party has gone. A bunch of relatively junior spokesmen are the voice of the party. They may be sincere and mean well, but the Congress’ revival will not happen on the shoulders of press conferences and statements. If that was the only formula for a party’s resurrection, then the Congress would have fought back on a blaze of glory riding on Alexio Reginaldo Lourenco’s statements and press conferences in 2013. He was clearly the best spokesman the Congress has had in recent history and his defeat has proven that party equity is not directly proportional to the noise levels of its spokesmen.
There needs to be a way out of here but the peculiarity of the problem is almost laughable. The party is in the woods but most party men have escaped. The Congress is in a hollow cavernous space. Its office has an eerie quiet of death and the silence of a cemetery. And yet it has no one to even write its epitaph. Nay, it doesn’t even have anyone to condone its death.
It needs to decide if it even wants a new life. And will it get it by a constant babble of press statements or the fervor of new energetic members, by hackneyed comments gleaned from that days newspaper or an informed plan of action chalked out on a drawing board, by a streak of blame game or by the energy of frontal organisations and lastly will it get it by tolerating corrupt baseless leaders or by throwing them out with the contempt they deserve as a first step to a new life. This is an informed decision that the Goa Pradesh Congress has to make because the people of Goa have already made theirs. But here is the party’s fate, so pathetic that it is near embarrassing to even point it out. It doesn’t have a single person left who can even make an informed choice towards a brand new beginning.
