A few days ago, MMC Chief Officer S L Naveen backtracked on his new plan to put all the municipal workers in a single ward per day to get desilting of gutters done as pre-monsoon works. He faced severe opposition for this from the councillors who want to follow the practice of two workers per councilor and these two workers, mind you, mostly work in the councillors’ backyards.
All this has no direction, its seven days since Tito Cardozo and Sadanand Naik moved a no confidence motion with seven councilors. This, a day after they got Rebello to withdraw his resignation, saying he should continue and they will support him.
“The no-confidence has been fixed for May 12 and we had eight signed the no-confidence. We need 11 councillors to overthrow Gonzaco, since we don’t want the people to think that we support Gonzaco especially after the illegal construction controversy and the taint,” explained Cardozo.
Cardozo leads the Vijai-Digamabr MLAs panel of eight councillors, plus Bertha Cardozo who they claim is in their camp despite her not signing the no-confidence.
On the other side is the man who made Rebello the Chairperson and the man who got him to resign – none other than former chairperson Arthur D’Silva. He wants to control the municipality only to show that his number games are better than those of Fatorda MLA Vijai Sardesai and of Margao MLA former Chief Minister Digambar. Not to forget that D’Silva has the support of the BJP government.
“I told him to resign, for the good of Margao and to see that we focus on development and get the works done, gutters desilted and roads repaired before the monsoon. But he got cheated by assurances and backstabbed me and withdrew the resignation,” explains D’Silva.
His is now non-committal on keeping Rebello and is looking at numbers himself to overthrow him, but is short by a big margin and has just five councillors on his side. The problem in these games is if nobody has eleven councillors to vote out Rebello, then he stays and gets a third lifeline.
In the midst of the controversy over the illegal construction at Maddel, the stay by the BJP government and UD Minister Francis D’Souza, Rebello’s survival despite two MLAs trying to ouster him and he being backstabbed and embarrassed to pull back a resignation, he still remains as the chairperson.
“I withdrew because Tito and group promised me support saying that since I got works worth Rs 2 crore passed, I should implement it before the code of conduct and the municipal polls in October and just a day after the assurances and withdrawing the resignation, the same faction pushed a no-confidence motion against me, isn’t that absurd?” asks Rebello.
A no-confidence motion can be taken when signed by seven councilors and becomes a trust vote when mooted by 11 of the 20 councillors. Right now nothing looks clear as to who will emerge as the interim champion. This is Margao’s own Manny Pacquiao v/s Floyd Mayfeather below the belt cheap shot but the sufferers are the city inhabitants.
