PANJIM: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal saw and felt enough in a sea of white caps, his party’s most potent public engagement tool, at the Campal grounds on Sunday, to officially press the poll button to call for a “historic change”. At the end of his hour long speech, his first ever, which began after a short circuit in the audio network, he declared what the AAP’s rising army of volunteers wanted to hear.
“People of Goa have to come together and fight these elections. In Delhi people did not campaign for AAP or Kejriwal. They campaigned for the future of their children. Goans need to do this now. The 2017 elections will be a revolutionary movement giving birth to honest politics.
While there were varying estimates about the size of the crowd, (with the minimum base figure arrived at 8000), the impact of the rally was felt due to the vast presence of people from Salcete, Mormugao and of course Panjim, the numbers actually swelling as the rally progressed. Buoyed by the turnout, Kejriwal said “I see the same anger on the faces of people in Goa, due to corruption as I saw in Delhi against the Congress government. People of Goa have now said “Enough is enough”.
Stating that Goa is a “victim” of corruption done by Congress and BJP and Goa’s beautiful culture has been converted into a culture of ‘sex, drugs and gambling’ by the successive governments.
“It’s high time, we bring in historical change in Goa during the coming assembly election just like that of Delhi,” Kejriwal told the crowd as well as hundreds of volunteers, many of them from outside Goa, to lend logistical support for the rally.
Kejriwal, who welcomed people gathered at the meeting with a Konkani language flavor, said “a situation similar to that was in Delhi, that forced people to bring an aam admi (common man) party into power.
“Sex, drugs and gambling is a culture introduced in Goa by the Congress Party and carried forward by BJP. Nothing has changed over the years. Both Congress and BJP have taken alternate terms to fool people of Goa,” he alleged.
“Now people want change, they want clean and honest governance. People of Goa will have to vote for honest government during the coming election. We have no money power but we have a power of honesty,” Kejriwal said.
Earlier, while addressing the public meeting, AAP national secretary Pankaj Gupta said that the national parties always underestimated the power of common man, as for them no person can enter politics without money and muscle power. “But, we did bring that change and with the same hope now we have entered into Goa politics,” he said.
As he was addressing the crowd, a minor power short circuit was reported that halted the programme for nearly 20 minutes.
