the goan I network
PANAJI
George Fernandes, the iconic socialist leader and former Union minister who died in Delhi on Tuesday, is being remembered from nooks and corners of the country for his multi-faceted lifetime contribution to politics, trade unionism, his unrelenting pro-Tibet stance and as Industries Minister in Moraji Desai’s cabinet for driving out soft drink giant Coca Cola.
In Goa, though, he will be remembered of course for being the architect of the Konkan Railway project, and also not so fondly for flipping open the floodgates of political defection, by stitching together the short-lived Churchill Alemao-Proto Barbosa led Progressive Democratic Front government in March 1990.
The development triggered a decade and more of defection-ridden instability of the Goan polity which saw governments fall and form. The coveted Chief Ministerial chair rotated a dozen times in the 1990-99 decade between seven Goa politicians -- Pratapsing Rane, Late Dr Luis Proto Barbosa, Late Dr Wilfred de Souza, Ravi Naik, Luizinho Faleiro, Francisco Sardinha and Churchill Alemao.
The volcanic malaise of defection first erupted in Goan politics when Fernandes, a die-hard anti-Congress politician, engineered the first of the 1990s defections with the Churchill-Barbosa-led rebellion in the Goa Congress.
A Constitutional Amendment enacted in 2003 by Vajpayee government strengthened the Anti-Defection Law to make floor crossing tough for the politicos. Fernandes was the convenor of the NDA and played a significant role in its enactment by Parliament. But it hasn’t yet helped wipe the malaise off Goa’s polity nearly three decades later.
