On the one hand, former Benaulim MLA Churchill Alemao is languishing in jails for his alleged commitment fees and bribes taken from the Louis Berger firm in the JICA water project. On the other hand, another former Benaulim MLA, Mickky Pacheco is completing a six month sentence for slapping a government servant. The current Benaulim MLA Caitu Silva has a sword hanging over his head as Valanka Alemao challenges his Indian-Portuguese nationality with documents of his birth registered in Portugal.
Each one’s case is murkier than the other. Each has faced arrest, spent hours in courts instead of the constituency, each one has a dark side as the villagers say but even worse, Benaulim continues to trust these Bad Boys.
Churchill who’s been MLA before in 1994 has withstood lots of trouble in the constituency from battling smuggling cases with his brothers to goondagiri, assault and extortion. It’s not just his brothers who were part of his Robin Hood activity of looting the rich and paying off the poor. His advocate daughter turned politician is also believed to be a part of his money collection and deals, with Valanka being the source to meet for any favors during his 2007 to 2012 stint as PWD Minister.
In the nineties, the Churchill Brothers would pay petty sums to garner youth together to make them look as their supporters and put them on pickups and rally them around the village from Cavelossim to Varca to Benaulim and Colva.
“Churchill first spoilt Benaulim because of this to make elections about money. Then he had to compensate and thus started the extortion from hotels, engineers, contractors and then the bribes from the likes of Louis Berger. Benaulim got stuck electing such a corrupt MLA,” said Braulio, a local resident.
But that got even worse in 2002 and in came a new face in Mickky Pacheco. The US return jumped in and began buying his way out. He bought out half of Churchill’s supporters, distributed double the cash, threatened double the amount and romped home to defeat Churchill and send him packing to the Lok Sabha, far away from Benaulim.
But 2002 to 2012 was a huge downfall for Mickky. Cases of assault in the electricity department, cases of assault in casinos, abetment to suicide, landfilling of a water body, selling off assets by forging his previous wife Sarah’s signature and also violating traffic rules by riding around massive racer bikes on the highway with no helmet. As of now Mickky sits in prison, Goa’s first MLA to be convicted and jailed. “If you say, you harvest what you sow, then it’s clear that Benaulim has been rewarded with what they elected. Each one of these characters from Mickky to Churchill to Caitu has been elected by Benaulim residents and now you see what the result is,” explains popular dentist who also put his hat in the political ring in 2012 but came out unsuccessful, Dr Hubert Gomes.
The current MLA, Caitu Silva is unavailable for weeks, days and even months as he runs between Supreme Court of India, Bombay High Court, and Court of the Home Minister. All this because his losing opponent, Advocate Valanka Alemao has raised an issue of him having registered his birth in Portugal which would result in his election to the Assembly being null and void.
“Benaulim has always suffered due to petty politics. Forget about the past MLAs. Let the law catch up with them if guilty. I feel sorry for the present MLA. BJP and UPA have kept a sword dangling over his head for the past 3 and a half years with regard to his citizenship. Development has come to a standstill due to financial crunch and the MLA cannot raise his voice as he will be pulled up and blackmailed if he does so,” explains resident and youth political leader David Aguiar.
In this whole situation the constituents have to suffer. The level of vindictive politics is a blot on democracy. That is why Benaulim now slowly seems to stress on clean candidates irrespective of any party without any baggage so that no one can ever blackmail them in the course of their 5 year term.
But Benaulim’s tryst with those kinds of candidates has also been bad. One John Fernandes who came close to winning once is now languishing in jail for an alleged rape of a Russian woman.
“Benaulim has had horrible leaders. The last good one was Monte Da Silva but after that it has been one worse than the other. The people thought this time they would be smart and elect a new guy and voted Caitu unaware of his citizenship issue but that also seemed to have stalled the constituency,” explains former hotelier Salazar Vaz.
Salazar explains that from Cavelossim to Colva, the constituency works on the quick buck of tourism or migrating and the intellect levels of the entire constituency is very low and they’re gullible enough to fall for anything. Hopefully the guilty will be punished and Benaulim may have a new look of leaders to elect sans corruption, temper issues and sans citizenship errors.
People hope that the BJP and Congress don’t give these three any election tickets and that they should be phased out from Goan Politics in 2017.
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