From tragic hero to the face of corruption

Between March 27 and April 14 of 1990, the Chief Minister of Goa would often travel in his official Contessa car, from the town of Margao to Benaulim, his constituency. While passing through Kharebandh, he would almost always notice a group of fisherwomen carrying baskets of fish, looking very disgruntled. These fisher folk would invariably not be allowed to board the buses to Benaulim, by the passengers because of their smelly baskets. The Chief Minister would stop and ask them to hop in. The boot would be opened for all the baskets and the front and back seats would be packed by fisherwomen with the honourable Chief Minister sandwiched in between. But he didn’t mind. On his way to Benaulim and onward to his village of Varca he picked up gossip and vital information from these local ladies, not to speak of immense goodwill, even if his car always smelt of fish. That was Churchill Alemao.

25 years later as he sits on the cold floor of a police lock up, praying for basic requirements like a western style toilet to save the pressure on his week knees, he is sadly out on a limb. Frustrated, without the support of the teeming millions, his mind may well be on a flashback mode, when he, the master fisherman, led his team on his trawler to catch fish in the middle of the night. Those who knew him from those days, have told others who this writer spoke to, that he had an eye of an eagle and the sharpness of a hawk who could detect shoals of fish in the ocean from the light of just a sliver of moonlight. “He knew what he wanted, how it could be got and where he would get it”, said someone who has known Churchill for over 30 years. And that’s the way Alemao has always played the game- of football and politics.

The end has always justified his means. From the early days when the sobriquet Robin Hood fitted him like a glove, he openly took money from those who wanted work done and could afford to pay and gave all of it away to the poor who needed money.

Here are two instances, narrated by a veteran journalist who was present on both occasions. Shortly after his 18 day tenure as Chief Minister, when he stepped down honourably to make way for Luis Proto Barboza, he moved into one of the other ministerial bungalows at Altinho, an old lady from Sattari came to him during one of his morning durbars. She wanted a tidy sum of Rs 5000 (in those days) for an emergency. Churchill asked her to wait while he dealt with others. A contractor arrived and asked for a project file to be cleared. In full public view Churchill asked the old lady again how much she wanted. When she said Rs 5000, he turned to the contractor and said “Please give the lady Rs 10,000 and give me your file. I’ll clear your project”. The lady and the contractor both left happy with Churchill not making a single paisa on the deal. In the second instance, just after he became CM, everyone walked into his office as if it was a village balcao. One such visitor asked him how much he would need to pay for some work. An enraged Alemao started shouting the choicest of expletives in Konkani and stormed out of his office. Seeing a senior reporter outside, he put his arm around him and said “That bxxxxd came to offer me money in front of everyone. Do you think I’ll take money like this?” He meant that he took money only to give it away.

This was always a constant in Churchill’s life. From Benaulim to Bicholim, from Canacona to Calangute, this tall six footer, with a glint in his eyes, led a charm offensive. Giving away gold chains to new mothers to packets of sweets because he went to Delhi, to a pen stand with a calculator for journalists, after a trip abroad, he has given what he has got. One of his recent coaches at Churchill Brothers, who wasn’t paid for months reveals how, one night as he sat with his favourite bottle of scotch,  he wept and said “ I feel like dying because I haven’t paid my layers. I’m waiting for some money to pay them off totally’.

However, let there be no mistake. He is no saint but has survived this long in politics, toppling governments on one hand and winning football tournaments on the other, by constantly living the life of a drama king. If there is one walking talking living tiatrist for whom all of Goa is a stage, it is Churchill Alemao. But it is his vulnerability, perceived or otherwise, which has been his survival pill. When hunted by the police during the Konkani language agitation, he took to riding behind the young student leader Vijay Sardesai’s scooter. But he was so scared of the cops, that he insisted on “a thin fellow” to sit behind him on Vijay’s scooter to ‘cover him’. This was laughable as the broad Churchill would stand out in a huge crowd leave alone a tiny scooter. But a survivor, he even hid in the river Sal diving and coming up for breath the whole night as the police looked for him, to pick him up during the Konkani agitation movement till he dramatically turned up in the Assembly, with a visitors pass given by Luizinho Faleiro, and said “Churchill is here”. He had received his anticipatory bail orders by then though.

So what really has changed from then to now. Quite simply Churchill, like the Goa he truly loves, has lost his simplicity and his simple ways. In his last tenure as PWD minister, he carried on with the first part of taking from the rich and discarded the second and the most endearing part which made him Robin Hood. And then like a quintessential tragic hero, he displayed one tragic flaw- his main weakness and probably the reason for his downfall- his daughter Valanka. The stories of her abusive ways, her demand for money have been doing the rounds but have now found their way in to statements recorded by witnesses it the Louis Berger bribery scam. This coupled with stories of massive amounts of money being asked of contractors- which Alemao has always denied, and from people looking for jobs, made Churchill fall from being a flawed but loved hero to just another politician. Even when he went to jail under the COFEOSA act after his brother Alvernaz was killed while carting away gold stashed in truck batteries, which had arrived by sea and offloaded on the Zalor beach, he had a fan following, and loads of local sympathy, even in the Aguada jail where he was kept and regularly addressed the inmates standing on a makeshift stool.

Today, as he struggles to sit in the cramped police lock up in Panjim, he is very very lonely. He may not be the most corrupt politician in Goa today but has  very sadly been so brazen about  using money for his political gains, that the charge of corruption, in an era when Goa has changed and its youth do not recognise the old Churchill; sticks to the man. He has no party, no government to back him and has lost many of him followers. And like the Latin American dictator in the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, “The Autumn of the Patriarch”, Alemao is in a desolate phase not walking into the sunset on a blaze of glory but looking into the sun as it sets on his political career. And yet, somewhere lies that glimmer of hope, that it’s still perhaps a trifle early to write his political epitaph. The ultimate referee, the good God in heaven, has called extra time on Alemao’s most vital football match and he has little time to score to win. But the long whistle still hasn’t been blown. Not yet. Not yet.