PANJIM: As Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s Indigo flight landed from Delhi and was taxing on the tarmac, across the State sat two BJP MLAs wolfing a fish thali at Sahil, a very popular tavern on CHOGM road in Porvorim. The cuisine — fish fry, kismur, thick curry and rice, was food for a lot of thought. One of them an MLA from North Goa, got up to place call to a UK number – +4477266xx959 – (two digits withheld). When the call was answered, the MLA said “Sir I hope you are taking the flight today. We are waiting for you. We are totally with you.” The person on the other end of the line was Francis D’Souza, just settling down for breakfast in Liverpool (UK)
He then turned and told this writer, “He is very happy that we are with him. Imposing Arlekar or Parsekar without taking anyone into confidence will alienate people of South Goa and many others. This is the time for the BJP to show that it’s not communal.”
The MLA then passed the phone to his lunch companion, the other MLA, from a central Goa minority dominated constituency who addressed the Deputy CM as “saheb”, and said, “Please come back soon. Let us meet and decide.”
This conversation and the way this story unfolds, will pave the path for the new Chief Minister in thorns and not roses. With Parrikar keen to sideline Francis D’Souza and have a RSS devotee completely under his control, as his successor, the sulking Deputy Chief Minister of Goa and a growing group of MLAs will, for the first time, morph into a dissident group, which may have stability ramifications for the BJP.
The group of MLAs who would like Francis D’souza, to be in the shortlist and become Chief Minister — without any hope of much success — are Michael Lobo, Vishnu Wagh, Kiran Kandolkar, Glen Ticlo and possibly Carlos Almeida.
While there was never any doubt that Francis D’Souza was a symbolic Deputy Chief Minister, in deference to the mandate that Manohar Parrikar got in South Goa, the manner in which he has been sidelined is indicative of the clear hard line that the BJP will now push forward. When the Deputy Chief Minister who was in Liverpool, in the middle of his holiday in England, spoke to Mr Parrikar on Thursday morning, he was told exactly what everyone else was told. Speaking to Herald from Liverpool, Mr Francis D’souza said, “He told me that there would be a meeting of MLAs where a shortlist of names would be done. Those names will be sent to the BJP parliamentary board which will then decide.”
According to MLAs who spoke to him the Deputy CM expected a different tone of voice and nature of discussion that befitted a conversation between the number one and the number two of the government. It is also clear that Francis D’Souza wants the job that Mr Parrikar will relinquish. He told Herald, “I have been the number two in the government. I have held the reigns in the CM’s absence. I have performed as leader of the House when he had to miss the Assembly and I’m one the senior most. I’m fully capable of becoming the Chief Minister of Goa.”
Unfortunately, the Deputy Chief Minister will not even get back to Goa in time to say his piece to the other MLAs and to his outgoing boss in the meeting of the BJP legislature party on Friday morning. At the time of filing this report, he had reached London from Liverpool to take the Jet Airways flight to Mumbai, reaching Mumbai at 11 am (Friday) and Goa by late afternoon. He told Herald from the Heathrow airport, “Unfortunately, I will not be there for the meeting of MLAs,” in a tone that sounded despondent.
Whether he will be the rallying force of MLAs, who were Parrikar’s MLAs and not BJP’s remains to be seen, but he is at the very least a hook on which the BJP’s dissident movement will hang.
