2022 was no year to celebrate democracy in Goa. The year began with a heated campaign to rule the State with the two main rivals, BJP and the Congress competing. After a lacklustre campaign by the BJP, the party scraped through with 20 seats and a vote percentage of 33.1. A jaded Congress won a mere 11 seats with a vote share of 23.34% and was a secluded second despite predictions it would fare better; perhaps even narrowly win. Other parties in the fray trailed with single-digit percentages and collectively split votes that enabled a BJP win.
The BJP was slated for defeat owing to its persistent non performance in the previous five years, and even before. Public disenchantment was huge. Even the Chief Minister Pramod Sawant sneaked in by a mere whisker and, that too, in the counting of postal ballots. Delayed government formation betrayed an internal power struggle and, with this, the limp of democracy in Goa grew manifest.
Earlier, when the BJP was roundly defeated in 2017 with a miserly 13 seats, it sneered at the democratic outcome. It snubbed the voters with an overnight in-your-face manipulation. An already-weakened democracy was rendered sterile. The BJP claimed a comfortable majority in the Assembly both in 2017 and again in 2022. It was, however, not through the ballot. Congresspersons (and other parties/independents) were allured into the BJP under questionable political engineering. Those who were co-opted (some say coerced) into joining the government now display a hushed presence. Ideally, the primary role of the Official Opposition, as well as other, smaller opposition parties and independents is to question government actions, to present alternatives to government positions, and to provide the option of an alternative government.
With its political manoeuvres, the BJP has now lost its ideological substance. After all, political ideologies are ideas, beliefs, values, and opinions which provide foundations for public policy, social and political arrangements. When ideology is discarded as basis for governance, the slide of democracy begins. A cursory appraisal of BJP performance post the 2017 election reveals a dismal witness of non-performance. One can put that down to lack of ideological undergirding. Mere grand announcements and rhetoric about this or that scheme do not add up to performance.
Today, government cares two hoots for the legislature. With party access to massive financial resources, defections are made easy. Compliant legislators convert legislative bodies into limp and ineffectual legislative bodies. Defections are not political ‘crossovers’ or mergers between large chunks of one party with the ruling party. Defectors are those who have abandoned peoples trust and mandates. It defies belief that a Congressperson whose party swears by secular socialism can walk over to a party with very conflicting convictions. They should have returned to the people for a fresh mandate. Now, the people fail to see visible progress on multiple social and economic indicators. As of January 1, 2023, 9.9 % is Goa’s unemployment rate that has, for a while, stayed higher than the national average according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). And this is just one illustration.
The Assembly is in a muddle. Notwithstanding denial from the Chief Minister and the Speaker (past and present), BJP nominated speakers have not shown political detachment from their party affiliations. Within the peak values of democracy, a speaker must resign his party membership, so that they can be neutral and fair arbiters when a consensus at times of political differences between government and opposition. In the last Assembly, the Speaker calculatingly dragged out the case over defections and farcically protracted time. He had no intention to call the defections by their name “ political decadence.
A speaker is responsible for presiding over assembly debates. Vijay Sardesai referred to Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar as acting as a servant of the Government. His words are being misconstrued. Sardesai was telling a harsh truth, namely that SpeakerTawadkar is not being independent or consultative in judging how long the assembly session should be and to collectively identify issues for legislative consideration. Instead, curtailed assembly sessions have become the fashion of this government.
A speaker is under obligation to maintain balance and be inclusive in the legislative space and in matters of political agendas. Instead, he has sent Goa out on a democratic limp. Nor did the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court serve public interest. It dragged its feet, and, only after the new assembly was elected, did it pronounce a delayed ruling on the side of the ruling powers, thus diminishing judicial probity. It endorsed the Speaker’s order dismissing two petitions seeking disqualification of 12 MLAs who switched parties.
The Executive takes its own decisions with little or no accountability. This week alone, in full public glare, the government allegedly expended a few crores on the inauguration of the Zuari Bridge. A similar wild splurging of funds happened for the swearing-in ceremony of the Cabinet in March this year. The Tourism Ministry planned a junket by sending a flight-load of people to four European destinations. Are there tangible outcomes they can show other than depletion of the exchequer? Really major decisions must go through the court of the people. When that is not feasible, the government cannot keep the Assembly aloof.
Such precedents do not brood well for governance and accountability. Politics which shows no respect to consultative mechanisms has reason to review itself, self-critique and transform. But people in power do not part with power voluntarily. This is reason enough for grassroots communities to organize themselves responsibly in community-level fora to scrutinize government policy and projects to know if what is owing to them actually reaches them. Democracy acquires depth and meaning only when an entire legislature approves of government actions. The Opposition cannot be kept aloof.
Failed policies and botched implementation is all about a limp democracy. For 2023, we need peoples collectives to reclaim democracy through collective, peaceful and persistent dissent.
