During my conversation a few days back with one of the contestants for the forthcoming election for Zilla Parishad when he begged with me to vote for him and also pleading with me to impress upon the people to vote for him only, I asked him, why should I vote for you when you are not my candidate because you are selected without my consent and also without the consent of the larger number of the voters from our Constituency, ironically and regretfully you are selected by a coterie of those few who got some ulterior motive behind selecting you, in fact this coterie selected you because they want to loot the innocent locals by keeping their guns on your shoulder.
This coterie has dumped the contestant on our shoulders in the name of their High Command which is as per my information is a fictitious body and existing only on paper. I will not vote for the candidate who is imposed on us by a few having ulterior motive. When I further asked him what have you done for the people in the past for their cause so that out of gratitude at least, they will vote for you, he had no answer. Hence, I will not vote for a candidate whose contribution for the public cause is Zero. Such candidates when elected they turn into Maharajas and Hitlers without any obligations towards the woes of the common people.
Then I asked, why you think people should vote for you, what qualities you possess to attract the people towards you? He replied saying, once elected I will do my best to settle all your issues. For this I retorted, when this toothless body ZP is devoid of any concrete and practicable powers to do anything, how can you say you will do everything after you got elected?
ZP election is a big tamasha and for the contestants as status symbol and once they get elected the degree of this status increases. Some will spend money after this election while the others make their presence felt but the MLA’s will veto all the resolutions brought for devolving the powers of ZP back to the ZP.
On the paper the ZP are given lot of powers but they are not implementable till the MLA’s and government remained adamant to devolve these powers practically to the ZP, till then ZP will remain as a big joke.
In my Constituency there are many contestants vying for the victory, they have one object to defeat the powerful one belonging to the powerful party. But how they can achieve their goal individually? Impossible, in this way they will all lose and for that matter they will all lose miserably giving victory on Silver platter to the already powerful party candidate. They all should have come under one banner and fought the election one against the other. But no, instead they like blind volunteered to go on their own individually. Those who act as managers for their parties should have thought over it in the beginning itself. Those who tried to destroy the structure of my village should be kept out and their candidate should be defeated otherwise they will further degoanise Candolim especially my locality. Candoicars must not forgive such persons.
A.Veronica Fernandes.