The Big Goan - Goa Holiday Blog

We have heard of jumping jacks but there is no one to beat the Goan politician. He is, quick and extremely swift. This is an art he wasn’t born with. His trade has made him learn and master it. He knows that the time he has to stay in the “kodel” is not specified. His adversaries are both his “foes in the ruling party and his friends in the opposition”. He trusts no one.

His trips abroad are few nowadays and far between. He has observed that when he is abroad the sea back in goa can be rough and his “Kodel” could be washed away even before he catches his return flight back home. He does not have trusted lieutenants in the ministry as he cannot rely on any one. His friends turned foes who are now friends again could change colours anytime.

Because of lack of clarity on the duration of his tenure in the Goan assembly, the Goan politician cum minister is very hardworking. He is working overtime to ensure that he uses whatever resources are available in his portfolio to pass projects for the requisite compensation. He makes new projects to ensure that the portfolio is not underutilized. Her wants to ensure that whatever time he is holding the particular portfolio he must milk it to the maximum. His village constituency sees extra bridges where they were never needed, extra foundation stones and extra garbage. All these extras are his justification to introduce megaprojects. His constituency sees an unusual rise in construction activities and mega projects are invited by him with open arms. He is not concerned about the future. He thinks he is elected for today and he must make the most of it. He calls it development. Any opposition to his activites and he is furious and calls all those activists as anti-Goan. Development is the key he screams.

One day his government has a fall. Now he twiddles with his thumbs, ruing all the pending projects which he nurtured and whose benefits would accrue to his successor. He tries to instigate activists and urges them to protest against mega projects and says such things are anti-Goan.

This is our Goan politician. He does not care about you and me. All that he cares about is himself. According to him if he goes to love goa and its environment he stands to lose and what guarantee is there that his successor will follow such a sincere path? So he says make merry when the going is good. Goa can go to the gutter.

There is no one to ask him, No ombudsman to arbitrate. No regulator to rein in his style of working. No freedom fighter to question his contribution to the decay of Goa. He is a commodity. Gets bought and sold at his own will. His constituents are expected to migrate their good opinion over to the party he currently holds. They have no choice.

And to think of it, he holds all kinds of portfolios such as education, health, home, power, weights and measures, sports, tourism, public works(PWD), water resources, industries, labour, transport etc. The cruel joke is he murders the law of his portfolio and still holds the portfolio like its ambassador. He may abuse all that his portfolio stands for. But you can do nothing against him. He is your Goa Minister.

He is Goa’s tragedy! He is our liability! And we thought we got him up there in Porvorim to get us out of a mess. Instead he is leading us to the gutter. On the way he will get off and keep us on our own.

We need to send him to the gutter instead. Remember the next time you vote. You are entitled to go to the voting booth and say that you don’t want to vote for anyone and if such no-votes exceed a specific percentage, the election commission is expected to nullify that election process.

It is time we acted. We owe it to ourselves

TheBigGoan.