Despite the clamour for change, after the party’s disastrous performance in the 2012 Goa Assembly elections and thereafter, the senior Congress leadership has ensured its stranglehold on power by retaining status quo and thwarting any changes. They have successfully pushed their nominees into State, district and constituency level committees, to the utter detriment of the party, as seen from its performance in the House or on the streets over the past two-and-half years. A majority of the nominees have no individual influence, but are satraps of these leaders and have been put there to block space and help the established leaders, who are responsible for the State that the Congress is in today.
A majority of the members of the committees would be hard pressed to get ten persons to stand by them, if asked for whom they could call their own. The leaders have managed to cleverly sabotage and nullified any attempted changes by
the high command and even when changes were made, they have forestalled any action against their way of functioning and stubbornly held on to power. Insiders admit that the blocks units in most of the assembly constituencies are hardly
functioning. They point out to the way that the Congress could not even manage to get people to man their booths during the recent Lok Sabha elections.
In fact their entire South Goa Lok Sabha
campaign had been literally outsourced to Independent
candidate Vijai Sardessai who was
the brain and the driving force behind Aleixo
Reginaldo Lourenco’s campaign.
North Goa was another ball game altogether
and the Congress got pulverised in
every constituency in the district, except
Calangute, where it got a very slender lead.
However, besides the four blocks that were
dissolved in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections,
the Congress has not made any move to
fire up the party and revitalize the party.
The other are metaphorically blocks are in a
permanent of slumber and have been allowed
to persist in their Kumbakaran mode, without
any light at the end of the tunnel. Congress
leaders disclose that internal elections were
signposted for December and a membership
drive was to take off from October.
Only then, there is hope that changes
would happen with many hoping that these
blocks will revitalize the party from the
grassroots.
However, there is nothing to indicate, that
this time the elections will not be manipulated
by the senior Congressmen to siphon in their
nominees to control the party from within. The
party does not have any second rung leadership.
This is admitted by all and sundry including
top Congress leaders.
Take for example a constituency like Benaulim
which has always been a strong Congress
bastion.
There is still no Congress leader to compete
with Churchill Alemao; even though his
political career is almost over the hill. Even his
daughter Valanka cannot compete with her father
in the popularity stakes and Churchill for
all the buffeting, received in the past and the
allegations of family raj and corruption, is still
the Congress’ best bet in Benaulim, belying the
paucity of leadership in the supposed Congress
heartland of Salcete.
In Cortalim, last time around the Congress
forfeited the game, giving Alina Saldanha,
Matanhy Saldanha’s widow, a walkover.
Presently, besides Nelly Furtado of the GVP,
there seems to be no Congressman who can
claim to be a leader in the areas except for estranged
Congress MLA Mauvin Godinho – who
today has positioned himself as the BJP’s B
team rather than member of a fighting Opposition
–the Congress.
In fact in the South, besides Chandrakant
Babu Kawalekar seems to be the only secure
leader in Quepem even though a cloud of alleged
corruption hangs over him due to his
sins of omission and commission when he was
heading the GIDC.
