PANAJI/PORVORIM
The people of Saligao constituency might have thought that they were voting for a change when they voted for Goa Forward Party’s Jayesh Salgaonkar, but that eventually didn’t turn out to be the case as GFP went on to support BJP to form the state government. Naturally then, a number of voters in Saligao feel betrayed, back-stabbed and some even said that their votes went in waste.
Describing Jayesh Salgaonkar as a traitor, Babush Heredia of Porvorim said he had betrayed the voters. “Jayesh Salgaonkar is a traitor. He came with a friend from PDA Colony literally begging us for support. We asked him what he stood for and what his leanings were. Jayesh said that his aim was to defeat the BJP and especially Dilip Parulekar. He vowed that GFP would never support the BJP,” said Heredia.
A high number of voters in Saligao were unable to swallow the fact that GFP, which had blamed BJP for U-turns, had itself taken such a huge U-turn by joining BJP. “We are not happy with the way things have shaped up within 24-hours after we got our MLA elected. We have to face the ire of the public. We are ground-level workers who worked hard for Jayesh’s victory,” lamented Rajesh Vazarkar, a resident from Saligao.
GFP was seen as a genuine opposition to the BJP and Jayesh was seen as an honest candidate by voters before elections. These two reasons combined ensured Jayesh’s victory over Parulekar, who had been MLA of Saligao for two straight terms.
Of these two reasons, it is evident to anyone now that GFP wasn’t really against BJP in terms of its ideology because otherwise it wouldn’t have supported BJP in forming the government. A resident of Saligao, who didn’t want to be named, said, “If not for Jayesh from GFP, we would have voted for AAP. We voted for Jayesh for a change. But, now GFP has joined hands with BJP. So, our vote was a waste.”
However, people still feel that Jayesh can bring a change in Saligao, although they feel hurt too. A number of Saligao residents said that the decision to support BJP was taken by GFP supremo Vijay Sardessai and therefore Jayesh can’t be blamed for it.
But, there was a set of people, who still thought that Jayesh, by the virtue of being a part of GFP, was to be
blamed as well.
