For the first time in perhaps, a year, Luizinho Faleiro has made news, and in a flashy style. He did what most Congress leaders would never have dared to do. He defied it from within and survived to tell the tale. The Congress and other like-minded parties did not get off to a good start. But at the end of negotiations at the central level, it was believed that a loose agreement had been thrashed out with the Goa Forward Party and Babush Monserrate. This tenuous agreement held out for a day or two and then news filtered out that Joseph Silva, who is close to Luizinho, had filed his candidature from Fatorda, against the high command directive but with the blessings of Faleiro. This was the GPCC state president at his political best. The only problem is that his energies were not used to demolish the BJP, MGP or AAP. They were used to undermine the party high command and Vijai Sardessai in particular.
When it became known that the crucial ‘B’ form, which gives the candidate the party symbol, was collected from the residence of Faleiro, the cat was out of the bag. It also became known that Silva had filed two nominations “ one as a Congress candidate and the second as a Goa Vikas Party candidate. This was resolved by the returning officer who accepted Silva’s form as a Congress candidate in a constituency which the high command had allotted to the GFP. In a day, Faleiro had outsmarted Digvijaya Singh, the high command and the faction in the Congress which had been lobbying for an alliance. It was a three-in-one blow.
This brought back memories of Ravi Naik’s coup in 1994 when he managed to get Governor Bhanu Prakash Singh to dismiss Wilfred D’Souza and make him chief minister. The move took Goa by surprise and was on a much large scale, but in essence it was rooted in defiance of the high command. Unfortunately for Naik, the Congress was in power at the centre at that time and within eight days his rule came to an end. Singh also lost his job in the process. The situation today is quite different. The graph of the Congress high command is sinking and Faleiro has probably chosen the right time to make his stand. Question is, not whether the high command takes action, but whether it is in a position to undo Faleiro’s plot. Can the high command get Faleiro to prevail on Silva to withdraw his nomination? This is a crucial test for the high command and if it dithers, this bout of defiance could spark a thousand fires within the party.
What cannot be denied is that Faleiro worked hard to rebuild the Congress in Goa which was an uphill task especially after John Fernandes ran through it like a tsunami. The GPCC president’s only failing is that he could not take the entire party with him. The Fatorda episode is a symptom of this failing.
