Why Panaji should Defeat Chief Minister Parrikar in the By-Election

Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar has been weaned in the RSS and has been a chief instructor in the organisation ever since he was a in high school. Frighteningly, it is from the Sangh that he claims to have learned about “progressiveness and gender equality.” Goa’s open culture knows no greater adversary than the minority-hating, controlling Sangh and should think twice before electing a man who was elevated to the post of local director of the RSS at the age of 26. He has proved more than willing to propagate their toxic ideology, even illegally ceding control over 51 government primary schools to Vidya Bharati, the educational wing of the Sangh in 2001.

Chief Minister Parrikar cannot be trusted with taxpayers’ money as he is a junket junkie. He notoriously spent a crore on sending the Government of Goa on a tour to Italy, Germany and Austria on a waste management tour. Even then garbage management in the state continues to be dire with garbage dumps being considered landmarks by commuters. Parrikar also dared to send 6 Goa MLAs and 3 Ministers to watch the 2014 Fifa World Cup in Brazil at the cost of a whopping eighty-nine lakhs.

Electing Manohar Parrikar would mean rewarding him for failing as India’s Defence Minister and not reinstating a man who has any real fondness for the state. He admits, “The pressure of the issues like Kashmir while working as Defence Minister in Delhi was one of the reasons why I chose to come back to Goa.” Goa should not have to put up with having a man at their helm who even foolishly and dangerously questioned India’s “No First Use” of Nuclear Weapons policy.

Parrikar insults Goans’ intelligence by claiming that he is responsible for revenue going up 25%. A habitual liar, he failed to mention that it was because of revenue-sharing from GST, a masterstroke of the UPA who first came up with it. It is a laughing matter that after being Panaji’s MLA for 25 years, he is still promising them things as basic as better drainage and public transportation, promises he should have fulfilled 20 years ago. He has also reneged on his promises to clear River Mandovi off casinos as demanded by Panjimites and his party have extended their permits, which is unsurprising given casinos are rumoured to be used by the BJP like party ATMs. We suspect that after having worked to make beer costlier, cracking down on Goa’s nightlife, and failing to act against church desecrations, this RSS man’s surgical on beef consumption is not far away.

Parrikar has scant respect for the media and recently remarked that his critics ought to dance naked for attention. He is also exceedingly paranoid about Facebook and Whatsapp where he is widely ridiculed. He leads the witch hunt against RTI activist Kashinath Shetye who has filed 195 petitions in court against the BJP government’s misdeeds.

By the admission of Vishwajit Rane the man who betrayed the mandate of the people of Goa by not turning up to the floor test and allowing the BJP who had only 13 seats compared to the Congress’ 17 out of 40 to horse trade themselves into power, the Goa assembly results were a clear indication that Goa’s silent majority had exercised an anti-BJP vote. That hasn’t stopped Parrikar from being instrumental in having bought support with ministerial berths and getting opportunists like Vishwajit to switch allegiance to the BJP at the cost of having to call an expensive by-election. Added to this flagrant disrespect for democracy was that Governor Mridula Singh bowed to BJP’s pressure by inviting it to prove its majority without giving the Congress a fair opportunity to prove ours first.

Panaji has the unique opportunity to bring the BJP to its knees for seizing power when they weren’t voted in by two-thirds of the state if it votes to defeat Manohar Parrikar, as he cannot be Chief Minister, nor is it likely that BJP can stay in power, if he isn’t voted in as a MLA. Granted, this is harder to achieve given Manohar Parrikar has unscrupulously used the office of Chief Minister to give himself an inequitably larger and more amplified platform than his rivals. By refusing to resign before the elections, Parrikar has proven that he does not have the stomach for a fair fight and that he covets power and position over integrity and democratic processes. So threatened is Parrikar by Congress’ Girish Chodankar that he has been frantically summoning first-time voters to try and hoodwink them into voting for him.

Whenever Goa is at a crossroads, it can always look to the Church for good counsel. In this case the usually politically aloof Archdioceses of Goa and Daman have made their rejection of Parrikar and the BJP very clear. The warning is chilling, ‘Increasingly everyday what we are witnessing in India, is nothing but a constitutional holocaust. Corruption is very bad, communalism is worse, but Nazism is worse than both…There are rare occasions — and August 23 is one — when the future of a state and of the whole nation depends on a single election… Freedom, democracy and secularism are more important than corruption.”

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    Indian National Congress

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