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THE GOAN NETWORK
MAPUSA: Raising the election tempo in the State, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) State convenor Elvis Gomes launched a stringent attack against the Congress calling it “vote cheaters” who had no right to label the Aam Aadmi Party as “vote splitters”.
“They (Congress) think we are vote splitters? They are voter cheaters. They have cheated the people of Goa. They have taken people’s votes and sold them for the highest price,” Gomes said.
“They have no right to say that we are vote splitters. We are here to stay and we will defeat them,” he added.
Gomes was responding to a query about a perception in the State that AAP was contesting the election to split secular (Congress) votes and thus acting as the ‘B Team’ of the BJP.
Taking the fight to the Congress camp, Gomes, who is the South Goa AAP candidate for Lok Sabha, further said the Congress candidate for the South Goa parliamentary seat, Francisco Sardinha, was responsible for splitting the party in the past.
“In 2000, Congress which had got 21 seats was split into three. Who did it? It was led by Congress leader Francisco Sardinha then. How can they have the audacity to call us vote splitters? They are voter cheaters,” he hit back.
The AAP convenor also chose to remind Congress how it failed to honour the mandate people had given the party in 2017 assembly polls.
“I want to tell the people of Goa that Congress had polled 71,000 votes out of 2,59,000 and had got 17 seats…So 71,000 voters who opted for an anti-BJP platform were cheated by these people…,” he opined.
Gomes said the Congress was raising the bogey of vote split against his party only because they were unsure and scared of AAP.
“We are not splitters. Times have changed. From 2000 onwards, till now, new voters have come in the age group of 18, 20 and 25 and I want to tell these voters that these Congressmen are cheaters,” he said.
Soon after AAP candidate Shekar Naik filed his nomination for the Mapusa by-election, the AAP convenor said that AAP condemned the politics of betrayal engaged by Congress and BJP in the State.
“We certainly have an advantage in the Mapusa by-election because what has transpired between the BJP and Congress everybody knows. Who is Congress or BJP, what is their ideology, what they want to do ahead no one knows,” Gomes said.
He said a hardcore BJP person was given entry into Congress just because he was not granted a ticket by his parent party.
“What message are they giving the people of Mapusa? Why are you fighting this election? What are your issues? When you are not getting a ticket you will jump this side, if not you will jump the other side,” he said adding, “This is what we are protesting. AAP condemns this type of politics and that is what is giving us an edge all across Goa whether it is Lok Sabha or the bypolls,”he said.
