By noon today the fate of MGP leader Sudin Dhavalikar will be known. He could be king, king-maker or member of the opposition. While he is not new to the first two roles, the third would take a lot of adjustment both politically and mentally. Dhavalikar has been in government since 2000 and it would not be wrong to say that he knows how it feels to sit in the opposition benches.
Dhavalikar must be seething with the manner in which his party, which ruled Goa for nearly two decades, was treated by exit pollsters. None though the MGP important enough to be considered as a contender in the election. Hence, the MGP was bundled together with the lesser knows, which are not so aptly labelled as ‘others’. Even the Aam Aadmi Party, which does not stand a chance of winning a single seat got better treatment, thanks more to the fact that it has a government in New Delhi and has a leader who knows how to grab eyeballs.
But Dhavalikar cannot be written off so easily. He is rightly credited with rebuilding the MGP after it was virtually hypothecated to the BJP and bringing it to a point where it could mount a challenge to the BJP. Unlike in the past where Dhavalikar chose to function in ‘safe mode’, this time he decided to take the fight to the BJP. He gambled on the general perception that the government under Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar had lost steam. He joined hands with the break-away faction of the RSS and took the plunge. If he wanted to be king, this was his moment and one has to agree that he chose it well.
Unlike the BJP, the MGP can shift between the two fixed political polls with ease. The party is equally acceptable to the BJP as well as the Congress and that is why he did not take hard stands on the medium of instruction issue. The MGP has made bold statements of wining 21 seats, but in reality all it needs is seven to eight, for Dhavalikar to make a bid for the throne. Although there is no precedent of a minority government being sworn in in the State, there are enough examples at the central level, although one must mention that a government of this sort is bound to be instable. But for Dhavalikar, it hardly matters as long as his wish to be chief minister is fulfilled. While most political watchers do not give the MGP more than three seats, the electorate could have different ideas.
In the worst case scenario, the MGP could win three or four seats and go back to being king-maker. So while Dhavalikar is a gambler, he is still the type who places half his chips on black on the other half on red. In the end he does not lose anything tangible, except the dream and hope of being chief minister.
