Dear Mr Rebello
I am a bit puzzled by the e-mails you sent me, linked to this call for
Goans to rule Goa. Who has been rulling Goa for the past 48 years?
Aren't all our politicians, MPs, MLAs and the lot all pure local goans?
Do you really believe Sonia Gandhi and the centre are that concerned
and have nothing else to do but spend time trying to manipulated the
everyday governance or rather the lack of it, in Goa? I don't think so.
The destruction of Goa, the disastrous policies , bad administration and
corruption are all done by goans. We goans are the only ones to be
blamed for the state of affairs in Goa. We are the ones who sell the
land to developers, we are the ones who don't cultivate our agricultural
lands, we are the ones who are so greedy that are trying to build
horrific concrete jungles in every little corner of agricultural land
and rice field, we are the ones who sell more and more land to the
miners so that they can continue to expand and ruin our land,
environment, water resources , pollute the rivers and so on, and finally
we the goans are the ones who vote for the same gang of politicians,
incompetent and corrupt as they are, over and over and over again.
In fact the only time there was some semblance of discipline and good
governance was around 1999 I think for a few months when Goa was under
President's rule (control of Central Govt.). That was the only time
when Goa had a General in charge, and that General Raphael Jacob
actually saved what ever is left of nature in Goa in the Western Ghats
and national parks and so on, and there was no corruption as no one
dared to even dream of corruption under the General's rule. If it
wasn't for him, we would just have a desert instead of forests and rich
biodiversity in the National Parks. There would not be any national
parks, to start with. The miners are still furious with him to this day!
I agree that our electorate needs to be educated much before elections
and it should not be difficult, as Goa is so small and only has about
350 villages out of which many are no longer populated. If dedicated
goans really wanted to do something about it yes, that is one crucial
thing to do but we need to be very clear about what do we mean by
"educating the electorate". The second one is to have some decent and
educated and dedicated people to stand for elections, people with some
principles, ideology and clear policies and people who are articulate
and with some knowledge. Otherwise, what is the point of educating the
electorate?
Also it is not very difficult to start some anti-corruption campaign in
Goa. We can start in a small way and grow into a movement. All we need
to start with is to have some Tshirts printed with anti-corruption
slogans and than get people to wear those T shirts on a certain day and
start the ball rolling. That will show the popular feeling about the
corruption in Goa.
I personally think that what we need in Goa is President's rule again to
clean up the mess and corruption, and bring some discipline, law and
order to Goa, so that we have the time to educate the masses and search
and prepare some decent politicians to fight future elections and have a
moratorium on all constructions and new mining activity until some
proper studies are done on the environmental and other impacts of those
activities and give some incentives to people to start taking an
interest in agriculture again.
And also, I hear many "let's act now" from many goans, but what does
that mean in concrete terms - act how? act where? what is the concrete
action plan to save Goa?
With best wishes
Carmen Miranda
On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Joseph Rebello wrote:
Dear Sirs /Madam,
With reference to the Emails as below, I would like to summarise what We
Goans really need to do in order not to be extinct like the Mauritian
Dodo, God forbid.!.
First, we should Re-Educate the Goans both in Goa and the Goans in the
wider World into BELIEVING that we, really were Annexed and not the
notion of to the Freedom Fighters that we were LIBERATED from the
erstwhile Portuguese only to fall prey to the Rampant Greed of Rape of
Virgin Land and Woman folk alike, Plunder of hillsides and Beast alike
by our so called MLA's, but to put in mildly, none other than Money
Laundering Agents at that.
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