Team Herald
PANJIM: Is the AAP-Congress Opposition alliance in Goa – stitched together carefully over months – fraying at the seams? Going by what the local leaders of both parties have said recently, that is the inference that political watchers are drawing.
The alliance at the national level under the INDIA bloc umbrella was always a need-based one when it came to the States. AAP boss Arvind Kejriwal made this very clear recently when he announced that his party would fight alone in the upcoming Delhi Assembly elections.
While there are no immediate elections in the State, Kejriwal’s comment has had immediate repercussions within Goa, with AAP state chief Amit Palekar saying to O Heraldo recently that Congress has not displayed the trust with which an alliance can be sustained.
AAP’s Benaulim MLA Venzy Viegas also sharpened his criticism of their alliance partner, saying that the delay in taking important decisions will bring the Congress down to single digits in the next Assembly. “We have informed the Congress hierarchy that everybody has to stay united and fight. However, Congress will be a latecomer as always, and will never declare tickets for their own leaders or discuss this with alliance partners. It will bring their seat count to single digits in Goa,” he warned.
Responding to the latest tremors, Goa Congress leader Sunil Kauthankar has lobbed the ball back in the court of the party's national leadership. “The alliance is there in Goa right now and the future course will be decided by the high command,” he said.
The alliance ship was in choppy waters back in June itself, when AAP candidate Joseph Pimenta trounced Congress rebel-turned-Independent candidate Royla Fernandes in the Benaulim Zilla Parishad bypolls.
Weeks before the Zilla Parishad polls, Congress’s Viriato Fernandes had reaped the benefits of the alliance in the Lok Sabha elections, winning the South Goa seat by a margin of 13,500-odd votes. The win was facilitated by the significant lead that two Assembly constituencies held by AAP – Benaulim and Velim – gave to Viriato.
But all that election-time bonhomie seems like a thing of the distant past now. Political analyst Prabhakar Timble said that a united front is a psychological advantage for all Opposition parties and a beacon of hope for the people who are in the anti-BJP ruling dispensation. "Otherwise it makes no difference at all. People don't trust the Congress as their internal power struggle hasn’t ended," he said.