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EDITORIAL
WHEREAS the BJP and its ally the Shiv Sena fell on their faces to in spite of the titans, like Mr Pramod Mahajan, Mr Gopinath Munde and Mr Balasaheb Thackeray leading the charge against a coalition handicapped with the huge bag of public resentment that usually accompanies incumbency, the party in Goa planted its flag in a constituency that had never been its against the array of titans of the state Congress. It would be too simplistic and hagiographic to attribute all the victory to one man, Mr Manohar Parrikar, but it would be too unrealistic not to give him the major credit. And this credit is for his political astuteness and wit: he got Mr Isidore Fernandes to cross over to the BJP, but not before he had resigned his seat as MLA and to make the Congress legislature party one man short in the Assembly. The game seemed like spoiled with the barrage of charge from the Congressmen that Mr Fernandes had crossed over on the promise of a handsome bribe for meeting his huge business and personal debts. The titans of the state Congress who campaigned in Poinguinim made Mr Fernandes� �sell-off� an important issue in their speeches.But what ultimately made him sail through was his individual record. Mr Fernandes is not one of those highly articulate legislators well-versed in laws and practices of the government; he is a man from the ground and that proved to his advantage, as it had done in the past two elections. The very fact that he has won the constituency three times and each time with a new symbol tells something of the story of his personal depth. He is not a miracle man, of course; he lost the first election he fought in 1994. But he has not lost the three subsequent elections and that tells of the popular support he has built up for himself. One of the best ways such politicians know how to build up and sustain their support base is to be available to the people when they need him � not just to the people who may want him to represent them on development issues of the constituency, not just the people who may want him to prevail upon the government to stop or modify a development project that they think will harm their interests, but also to the individuals who need him to make a phone call to a minister or officer for a job for their sons or to the men and women from the constituency who need money and lodging in Panaji while they take care of a sick member of the family in the GMC.
Politics, like all dealings in society or business, is a give and take. And it is easier to practise it in small constituencies like Poinguinim. There would be just a few thousands of families to be �given to� in order to �take� from them on the day of the poll. As a matter of fact, the few thousands of families make up the whole electorate. A politician does not have to bother himself about �giving� to all of them. Mr Isidore Fernandes has got about 7,000 of the total 11,500-odd votes, which shows that a politician can get himself elected by strengthening his give-and-take relationship with a large number of people, and not necessarily all of them.
Of course, not all vote Mr Fernandes got is his personal vote. There is vote of the BJP supporters in it. The BJP workers in Poinguinim were said to have initially resented the inclusion of Mr Fernandes in the party (a few, not able to stomach it, left the party; a negligible few) but obviously Mr Manohar Parrikar prevailed upon them. Mr Parrikar has steered the party into power and sustained it in government against all odds: this is a matter of prestige and pride for the BJP national organisation: and, no matter how much the party workers feel that Mr Parrikar�s strategems to keep the party in power are sometimes too radical or too polluting they go along with him. He is the one, after all, who has kept the Congress from coming back to power. The party workers must therefore fully support him to keep him going strong.
And if you keep the issues of political morality �like befriending past enemies and bringing pseudo-secularists home in order to keep himself in power� aside, Mr Manohar Parrikar has decidedly beaten the Congressmen in their own game. After their defeat in the last state elections and after their inability to form the government, the Congress publicly declared that they will sit out the next five years in the opposition and not make any attempts to topple the BJP government. However, privately they sounded hopeful that some of the men would walk out of the government and seek their support, which will lead to the fall of the government. What we have seen on the contrary is men who they thought would walk out have gone deeper into the fancy rooms of Mr Parrikar. Mathany Saldanha was the recent one. Then Isidore followed. We do not know who follows next.
- Forwarded by www.goa-world.com
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