Team Herald
MARGAO: On a campaign trail with candidates in Navelim constituency sees different emotions in the way the electorate reacts to them and those accompanying them making a very interesting study.
Congress candidate Luizinho Faleiro was welcomed in Mandop as if it were families welcoming their child returning home after a sojourn on board the ship or abroad. While there was one male who stayed home specially to meet him another told him that his vote was confirmed and there was no need for him to visit the households to seek it.
Faleiro was accompanied by over 50 people that included all sections of the ward. There were Catholic ladies in skirts and blouses and dresses, Hindu ladies in sarees, Muslim women in salwars and a significant number of migrant youth and girls.
“Around 50 percent of the voters in Mandop are migrants living as tenants,” Faleiro said as he made it a point to visit every house and every tenement. Corner meetings are held at the end of the door-to-door campaign in each ward and a large public meeting is proposed to be held in the constituency.
Zacharias Goes, who had sought a Congress ticket in Navelim, and who gave up his overseas job was present with Faleiro.
Independent candidate Avertano Furtado moves around with a sizeable crowd which again is a mixture representing the various sections of the electorate in the constituency. There was not much reaction from the houses that Furtado visited in Aquem Baixo and they just accepted the handouts given to them and listened to his plea to vote for him for a second term.
Very interestingly, Furtado has quite a number of BJP members accompanying him on his campaign and they are quite emphatic while canvassing with their known supporters.
On the other hand Satyavijay Naik, the rebel BJP member who is the MGP candidate has a significantly smaller group going around with him. Besides, he has to cut short his door-to-door campaign due to party matters.
Naik’s office at Aquem Baixo is managed by a person who is not very conversant with Konkani and prefers to speak in Marathi. The others at the office are largely migrant youngsters who tend to throw their weight around.
AAP candidate Siddarth Karapurkar moves around with five or six volunteers. His visit to voters in Davorlim had five local women with him and all of them were educated with some being home makers while others in service or having their own business.
Karapurkar took pains to explain to the electorate how badly the Congress and the BJP have let down Goans and appealed to them to vote for him to bring about a change. He especially mentioned the lapse of classifying the coconut tree as “grass” by the BJP to every Hindu household he visited pointing out that coconut is used by them for all their religious ceremonies.
He is concentrating on a door-to-door campaign and plans to have one public meeting as and when possible. “Given the strict rules of the Election Commission, I cannot afford to waste my time seeking all the permissions and adhering to all the norms to hold a corner meeting,” he said.
Independent candidate Edwin alias Cipru Cardoso visits houses with mostly youngsters accompanying him. Even his office at Navelim has mostly youngsters. Significantly while the elderly accompanying him are original Goans, the youngsters are equally divided into migrants and locals.
Cipru is right now concentrating on a door-to-door campaign with corner meetings being planned from January 27. “I propose to have only one public meeting at Navelim which is currently being planned,” he said.
