By Special Correspondent.
As scheduled and as disclosed in this forum earlier, the Annual General Body Meeting of Gulf Goans (Hotel Goan Heritage) started and ended in a chaotic situation with the election of three Board members turning into a farce. The chairman Justine Fernandes was forced to get down from the chair by the shareholders and hence the chair was handed over to Alex Wilson Coelho the so called vice chairman. It was a shame for the chairman to disgracefully leave his chair. When this was the case, Justine Fernandes had no moral right to continue as a chairman and play around with shareholders assets. The acting chairman Coelho tried to act like a Hitler as if the company is his father’s property. So much so, one of his colleagues in the board getting annoyed on him loudly shouted at Coelho saying “SHUT UP-SHUT UP”. When things were going out of hand for the board when it was exposed of its misdeeds, the share holders demanded from the board to resign and get out.
The meet started with the prayer by Coelho but it was not a proper prayer, it was a politically motivated prayer like a Tiatrist giving a “Zupatti” to his opponent. Such prayer will only bring a curse on the hotel and not a blessing. The prayer of an unblessed person who duped Kuwait Goans of their money will never be fruitful.
The acting chairman disclosed that the meeting will discuss all the 12 points in the Agenda but the meeting took up only one point and that was of Statement of Account which itself was incomplete while the remaining points remained undiscussed. This proves that this meet was nothing but a big joke.
It was first time in the history of this company that the board members were disgraced openly not only by the share holders but more than that by themselves washing their dirtry linen publicly even accusing one director of using Hotel’s property for his personal use and unfortunately the accused director failed to defend himself. At one particular moment, 4 directors were accused by the acting chairman of barging into the office of chairman demanding his resignation prematurely and yet again this accusation went unchallenged.
The chair disclosed that this time the profit has gown down but failed to cite the proper reason which according to this writer is due to shutting of hotel for a certain period of course unnecessarily thereby cheating the shareholders of worthy dividends. The dividends given this time was only 2.5 and incidentally earlier too was the same as per the available information. Now the question arises, are things moving in right direction in the company managed by the board of directors? Is this board under the ageing and incompetent chairman Justin Fernandes is competent enough to run the affairs of the Hotel properly? What is the capacity, qualification and contribution of Justin Fernandes and other directors to hold their seats in the board? What was their contribution in the promotion of Hotel Goan Heritage? Are they there for prestige issue or for productive purpose? The shareholders want to know the answer from each and every director to decide on the future course.
As per the beans spilled out during the course of meeting, almost for the last two years the company is running without the Chief Accountant and in this case who is controlling the finance of the company? Is it a Cashier or a Waiter or a Buttler? In this case it is bound to be a mess in the company for which every board member must be held responsible and every shareholder must be held accountable for electing the incompetent directors.
How stupid the outstation shareholders were proved thru the proxy forms they sent to idiots to elect idiots only. Were the proxy shareholders aware that their proxy forms would be utilized for the right candidates or they will be used by the receiver for his personal victory by ignoring the shareholders interest? Every shareholder’s interest is better dividend. The major shareholders stationed abroad are guilty of allowing their proxy forms to be misused by the person whom they relied in Goa. If these proxy votes were to utilize properly for the productive candidates, the meetting would not have been started and ended in a sour note. For this reason the blame should be on the shoulders of the proxy shareholders. Otherwise, for the next AGM the major proxy shareholders should present themselves and have a feel of their investment. In view of this, I salute the shareholders present for this AGM and voted for the right candidates for the betterment of the hotel
48 Hours before the election all the proxy forms were scrutinized and checked by the concerned parties along with the legal authority and they found everything in order. However, 12 hours before the election, one party of Coelho found some proxy forms not properly filled and thus these forms were disqualified. This was disclosed just before the election making other party to believe it was nothing but a trick to reduce the votes of Coelho’s opponents. Naturally the votes of Coelho faction was increased because the other side votes were decreased. But what was the legal authority of Coelho faction to disqualify the proxy forms and that too when everything was found to be in order 48 hours before the election? This has to be contested by the opponents of Coelho faction thru legal process, if necessary.
In the ensuing election as per the witnesses Coelho put a bunch of proxy forms in the ballot box much after the end of the meeting which is illegal. Jerry Fernandes and Filipe Ferdinand were declared as clear winners by defeating their rivals Verlekar and Wilson Rodrigues while Felix Ferrao was defeated by Lobo of Coelho faction.