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This, indeed, is the happiest news that any paper has carried so far. As an
activist myself, I realized a long time ago what the above activists are
realizing now. In 1997, I founded the Goa Environment Action Group to fight
(at that time) the Loud Music Noise Pollution in my village and the
surrounding areas. It soon became the agenda for Goa. GEAG is still active.
Just today a letter has been inwarded at the Aldona Health Center to urge
the health officer to take action on a particular residential building
which is burning its garbage with plastics and polluting the area with toxic
fumes. But I realized that being an activist was not enough. Therefore, 10
years ago, I helped found a political party to pursue the green agenda
forcefully. Today, I feel happy that other activists are realizing this and
are trying to get into the hot seats of politics. And why not? Doesn't
politics run our lives? Why should the activists not get into the fray to
make things betters and safer for themselves and the whole world? Gone are
the days when Activists and NGOs can compartmentalize 'politics' and
'activism'. The need of the hour is, in the words of Mahatma Gandhi, ' We
must be the CHANGE that we want to see in the world"
However, I must sound a word of caution to those who want to get into the
scheme of things (politics) of their own accord i.e. 'solo'. One may be very
sincere. But the lucre of office and the pressures thereof will be ever more
stronger for a solo person to withstand, however honourable the initial
intensions be. Therefore, a forum which has its own list of DOs and DON'Ts
will do better to push one of its own into the ring and cheer lead their
man/woman to victory. This has to be a way of life if we are to get what we
deserve without begging for the same on our knees and most often not getting
the same.
The motto of founding a political party (Goa Su-Raj Party) is:
To qualify a NGO into a full fledged political party. To get into the bull
fighting ring as a full blown bull with horns et al, to challenge the
existing political and all powerful bulls. A NGO can be pacified,
threatened, weakened (meaning infiltrated and diluted just like the GBA
perhaps) etc. But this cannot be done with a political party having a
strong agenda of its own. And last but not the least, if the staunch
political agenda of good governance succeeds in taking up the reins of the
government, all NGOs will have been dismantled (gone home) as there would
be no work for them to be around any more, nothing to protest about,
nothing to take out morchas about so on and so forth.
And this is the mission of the Goa Su-Raj Party. To send every NGO and NGO
oriented person home, to do some worthwhile work earning for themselves the
needs of their stomachs. Of course, NGOs are necessary, in that, these can
facilitate to extend the arm of the government where it would not naturally
reach, if you know what I mean.
Cheers to the activists coming into the hot seats of every day politics.
floriano
goasuraj
9890470896
www.goasu-raj.org
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GOA does not only need HONEST persons to contest elections, and,
Goa does not only need HONEST voters to elect honest persons.
But GOA mainly needs an 'HONEST SYSTEM of GOVERNANCE'.
Wherein, even a dishonest person is forced to be honest or to QUIT.
Such HONEST SYSTEM is knocking at GOA's portals.
A 'PRECIOUS GIFT' to GOA by committed GOANS.
A 'GIFT HORSE' that must not be looked in the mouth.
PPS=PEOPLE for POLITICAL SANITY
Display the 'PPS' sticker on your vehicle today, to reject political madness
tomorrow.
[Note: PPS stickers are available at all CHAMPS Stores -Mapusa-Panjim-
Margao]
