The state is steadily warming up to elections. While an ailing chief minister Manohar Parrikar continues to take treatment at GMC, the BJP is beginning to make its first moves. Central leader B L Santosh descended to take stock of the situation and parleys have begun with those concerned. The saffron brigade has gone in a huddle and the Congress is going into an overdrive approaching almost every disgruntled BJP leader offering them rehabilitation.
Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, in politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way. In Goa, the worry is not about the political plan, but the political ideologies that parties were standing up for. With politicos jumping parties and preferring to swim with the flow, the space has turned out to be a muddied mix of ideologies.
If Subhash Shirodkar, a staunch Congress veteran donned the BJP robe last year along with Dayanand Sopte it was entirely for political gains. Political ideologies don’t have any place in such scheme of things and development remains just an excuse.
The buck doesn’t stop there. A former BJP minister Mahadev Naik joined the Congress bandwagon in a bid to cross swords with the just-turned-saffron candidate Shirodkar. Mahadev preferred to fight his party since he remains isolated by the BJP in Shiroda. In distant Mandrem where another stage is being set for bypoll, Laxmikant Parsekar, a senior BJP member who is considered a party veteran and a face of BJP ideologies has spoken his mind of contesting as an Independent and fighting out both the BJP and Congress candidates.
Down South, another former BJP Minister Ramesh Tawadkar who had deserted the party after being dropped for the 2017 poll returns as a prodigal son with unknown political gains. It’s a known fact that the BJP will need him to pull tribal votes from Canacona in the Lok Sabha election.
The coalition dharma and ideologies which Goa Forward and MGP are talking about are not visible in their actions too. Vijai Sardesai plans to spread his wings over Mapusa where BJP is the main contender having lost their MLA Francis D’Souza who passed away recently. And MGP’s Deepak Dhavalikar is geared up to face its ally BJP in Shiroda.
It’s obvious that power-hungry politicos are at war with each other in a desperate bid to get an upper hand in the dispensation. The sorry state of affairs is visible on the ground as a coalition, which is bound by a common minimum programme, has nothing common to go to bypoll. United they stand in the government, but divided they are ready to fight the bypoll. Without active involvement of Parrikar, the man responsible for bringing together ideologically-different politicos, it only remains to be seen how the BJP stands up to the battle-lines drawn by their partners.
