It was all in the people’s hands when they went to the ballot box to vote on February 14. While an election that was expected to be won was blown, those who reposed faith in the party, including institutions of faith, will be asking, why can’t it even perform the role of an opposition? What will these institutions of faith feel now?
During the campaign for the Assembly elections, prominent preachers (priests) issued advisory videos, in Goa’s interest, making it all but clear that their underlying support was for Congress. The video advisories, which were about how to vote made it clear who to vote for. They went viral leaving no one in any doubt about what the institutions of faith wanted
Will the Congress, in opposition, at least respect these advisories, in Goa’s interest again, and perform in a manner that would make those who issued those advisories proud?
The Congress did not win the assembly elections in Goa, in spite of the backing, but shouldn’t they be a strong opposition. The manner in which the Goa Congress literally let the government off the hook for even attempting to deprive 186 panchayats of grassroots governance is a sign that they are complicit in a decision that is not just unconstitutional but anti-people. Then, in the name of administration, they appointed lower division clerks and junior-most government employees as bosses of panchayats. This also was an indication of how serious the government is about the proper functioning of panchayats.
One would have expected Congress to be the voice of grassroots democracy. And yet the legal challenge to the government not wanting to conduct the elections through a series of contradictory excuses was made by many different citizens of Goa, but no one from the Congress even called out the ruling party, only public-spirited citizens went to court against the decision.
But Congress was silent
This silence makes one thing clearly visible. Their total inaction as an opposition. This is when talk of many Congress MLAs on their way to the BJP gains ground. And one cannot really ignore the political sounds of Congressmen knocking at the BJP’s waiting room.
Image: A line of Congressmen all standing in a queue outside the waiting room of the BJP, either invited or uninvited
The image that comes to mind is this. A line of Congressmen all standing in a queue outside the waiting room of the BJP, either invited or uninvited. When they are doing that, one must also ask if they are haunted by their pre-election visit to the Bambolim cross where they met to take a pledge never to cross over to any other party.
Goa has had a history of having strong opposition voices like Jack de Sequeira, Luizinho Faleiro, Kashinath Jalmi, and Manohar Parrikar. Parrikar to many was a better opposition leader, who kept the ruling party on its toes, often flooring them on the floor. However, when in power, he did not back the very people he stood with- activists of the Goa Bachao Abhiyan fighting against the draconian Regional plan or the Village Groups of Goa against the SEZ. In power, he paved the way for the SEZs to be let off the hook. Does anyone in the current Congress have a sense of that history, one wonders
Now, both in the Assembly and in the Lok Sabha Goa Congressmen are not making the ruling party accountable. The South Goa MP Fransisco Sardinha didn’t utter a word when the draconian Major Ports Bill which would take away control of virtually all coastal land, mainly south of the Zuari, was tabled and passed in Parliament. Goa simply didn’t have a voice in Parliament when the common Goan’s interests and most importantly his identity and land, were literally been traded away.
The silence of the Congress makes them co-conspirators when democracy is in distress. Are they really with their people during the time of floods and calamities, when they lose their crops? Are they with the people when their lands and cashew trees have been bulldozed to pave way for the Mopa link road, are they with the people when the village bunds are destroyed, the sluice gates are broken and their crops are submerged in water leaving them with no harvest?
Does Goa have opposition MLAs? Let us understand this. One doesn’t need to leave a party formally and join another party officially to call it defection. Defection happens in your mind, in your body language, and in your heart. When opposition members, including MLAs, stop holding a ruling government accountable, for burning issues that affect the common Goan, they have already defected from their cause.
An opposition’s biggest strength is that it can carry the people with them. It can build trust and faith and be the vehicle to keep governments that the people don’t want, under check. Instead of doing that Congress itself is under check, almost tied in chains, unwilling or unable to speak and act
And one of the reasons could also be the leadership crisis it faces in its “High Command”. It is an irony that the only chance Congress has of redeeming itself is if Rahul Gandhi resigns as its working head. Though he is from the so-called “first family”, he should be the first to now go to save whatever remains of his party
On the eve of the elections, in Goa, other friends and well-wishers of the Congress had backed the party fully, on social media and elsewhere must come out on support. They too must be asking questions to Congress. Congress must ask itself what its well-wishers would be thinking. With so much support and backing, even from the most traditional institutions, Congress owes a debt to them and to the people of Goa, a debt they show no signs of paying back.
