Dear Floriano Vaz, In my humble opinion you are a worthy political advocate for the issues that need to be addressed in Goa, but if you continue to do what you are doing, you will go on achieving the same results. These results being that your party has no grassroots following and you are just one more voice of conscience that everybody ignores. Your party needs a political makeover and until it gets that, you must engage yourself and those willing to help you in such matters, single-mindedly and wholly focused in one and one strategy only.
Valmiki's post shows the direction. Goa is a fertile bed for the growth of corruption. It is a bountiful land with the most tolerant and accommodating people. That is what appeals to tourists. That alas that is also what appeals to the horrible disease of corruption that dwarfs every other public evil in its wake. It leaves the ordinary citizen robbed of self worth. All other public evils flow from just this one. If left unchecked, as Valmiki so aptly put it - Goa is damned. There's no benefit in saying that if Goans are kept alive to the issues of a crooked politician, he is able to garner the votes of the uneducated and poor outsiders. They have self worth too and if they are included in the equation of the fight against corruption, the corrupt will have no refuge. No number of Clinton Vazs will have any meaningful effect. Yes they will be called in by the Sanjith Rodrigues' and they will make their little changes, but they will be as effective against the greater malaise as a few sacks of earth will have against a bursting levee. The evil of bad governance must be tackled from it's most vulnerable underbelly - that of it's outstretched hand. Grip it, twist it and break it. You already have a core of Goans who have decided they will give no bribes. They must be multiplied and encouraged. And their deeds must be publicized as much as it is possible. Here's how you take the movement to the masses. You have the energy and the brains of Goan students and Goan youth that is now misused by the politicians for their nefarious ends. They are idealistic and they are brave. Harness their potential. Send them out in groups to perform public skits on the daily instances of corruption. Let the roadsides be their theatres and the public their audience. Fan them out from the towns into the most remote villages. Make them vary the act but sustain the message - we will prosper without corruption, we will be doomed with it. Take them in small groups to protest when a citizen brings you an instance of a bribe demanded. Bring in the press, the foreign media if need be. Bribery and corruption grows like mushrooms, In dark places and out of gaze. Bring in the sunlight of exposure. Go to the slumdwellers and enlist their youth. Teach them that there is a better life out there for them if they are willing to sacrifice for it. Feed their stomachs first. I am sure there are lots of Goans who have the means to give to them what they need of necessity. And if the Goans in Goa are tight fisted, ask Goans overseas for help. In this noble cause, they will not refuse. Bypass everything else. Leave pollution, environment, crime, language issues, community relations, police inactivity, bureaucratic ineptness and the myriad of problems that take up your attention to someone else. If you are on the road to solve just this one problem, you will have solved them all. _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list Goanet@lists.goanet.org http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org