scar Wilde, Irish playwright, poet, novelist and writer of comic phrase and wit once wrote, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you place the blame.” He could not have been referring to the Congress because the poor chap died in 1900, about 117 years before the Congress in Goa launched its blame game.
It all started with Jennifer Monserrate, who pointed a finger at senior leaders for not being able to covert 17 MLAs into 21, a simple mathematical problem, turned into a herculean task when no two people cannot agree on anything. The Congress has four former chief ministers. Pratapsing Rane was sworn in seven times. Luizinho Faleiro and Ravi Naik were sworn in twice each and Digambar Kamat once. It’s like having too many generals in the army and four-many cooks in the kitchen. The result is you lose the war and ruin the soup.
Then came Vishwajit Rane, the lone ranger caught in a political party more by compulsion than choice, who blamed the Congress for everything that went wrong. Babu Kavlekar, the new CLP leader called Rane a spy of the BJP. It is obvious Kavlekar has been watching re-runs of ‘Johnny English’.
Central Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, who was blamed for moving at the pace of a tortoise when the speed of a hare was called for, has blamed local leaders, read Luizinho Faleiro, for scuttling a pre-poll alliance forged with Vijai Sardesai. He also accused Vishwajit Rane of having coffee with Parrikar, which does not sound the same as Koffee
with Karan.
Luizinho Faleiro has blamed Vijai Sardesai for not coming to the rescue of the Congress, an accusation that is dripping with irony because it was the Faleiro faction which did everything to destroy Sardesai.
Former chief minister Digambar Kamat blamed everyone, other than himself for the fiasco, but unlike Rane has promised to stay with the Congress, for now.
And the central leaders, whose prime job is to protect Rahul Gandhi from criticism, blamed the Governor and the BJP. The BJP of course, blamed no one. It just went ahead and formed the government.
The Congress is going through a crisis of its own making. First, it could not decide on whom to elect as CLP leader and now it cannot decide whom to blame for losing a golden opportunity to form government. It doesn’t get worse than this.
Look at how Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal handled the shocking loss in Punjab. He did not try to find a scapegoat within the party. He found one on the outside. He blamed the electronic voting machines. (One must mention here that this idea is not original. The first person to blame EVMs for his loss was Churchill Alemao). Kejriwal said the machines were tampered as a result of which his vote share got transferred to the Congress.
And how does he know this? He has relied on pre-poll surveys which showed his party sweeping the polls in Punjab and he believes they got it right and the EVMs got it wrong.
Finally, whom should the electorate blame? No one. We just go with the flow and get the best deal because the question we always ask before punching the button on the EVM is, ‘what’s in it for me?’
