On Monday 22ndof this month, I was invited by Luizinho Faleiro to give him a company for the Lunch at Hotel Mandovi in Panjim. Luizinho and me known to each other from the time of language agitation when I took very active part from Kuwait in this movement. Because I was fasting, I only had a fresh Orange Juice while he and other colleagues of him went ahead with their meals. Many of those who were with Luizinho on the dining table were new Congressmen compared to me since I enrolled myself as a member of Congress while I was still a student, by paying Rs. 5/- When I joined Congress, the Congress culture in Goa was service to the society and precisely because of this Congress Party jumped from outside the Legislature to inside and ruled in Goa for such a long period.
However, due to greed for illicit money, illicit sex and brute political power, almost all the elected Congressmen bypassed the motto “Service to the Society” and got trapped on the wrong side in the last election where people like me disgusted with their ugly unCongress performance, kicked them out in the election foray.
The defeat for Congress in the last election was so deep that to come back to the surface again, not one Luizinho Faleiro as Congress president but even with one hundred Luizinho Faleiros will not be able to revive the grand old party which otherwise had fantastic record. As he spoke to me on the dining table for about 45 minutes, he had lofty plans to revive the party prospects and he looked very serious but all these plans to be operational and successful, the induction of new and young faces will not be sufficient enough. He relies on new faces and young blood on the revival of Congress.
It is a good idea to bring the freshers into the forefront but they must be told to behave well in a disciplined manner purely in Congress culture and tradition and not to aspire for election tickets within a night. We have seen how yesterday’s youth Congress leader by becoming a hero within a night is turned into a most corrupt politician in Goa. He not only sucked Congress in Goa but he even sucked the entire politics in Goa purely in the corrupt ways he learnt from corrupt Indian politics while he was a novitiate in corrupt youth Congress. In view of this Luizinho Faleiro must be very careful with the new faces that generally speaking are having high political ambitions to grab political power by any means for the purpose of making fast money thru loot and thus shamelessly live the life of Maharajas. Looting is not genuine Congress culture, it is the culture of the “Chors”.
Then I told Luiznho Faleiro that it will be next to impossible for him to revive the party with the presence of corrupt oldguards who were mainly responsible for the Congress debacle in the last election. Is it possible for him to throw them out even though they rightly deserve it for anti-party activities? Will Luizinho Faleiro take such a stringent action? Or the presence of his predecessor is imperative again to take hard decisions? One thing is certain, unless severe disciplinary action is taken against all the erring Congressmen though most of them are artificial Congressmen, people like me will never support corrupt Congress candidates. On the contrary we will oppose such corrupt candidates. Supporting Congress with all the corrupt Congressmen is like promoting corruption in an unCongress manner. Though Luizinho Faleiro is in a state of dilemma which may lead him into the Hamletic influence yet he must be bold enough to jump into Julius Caesarian citadel and say “I went, I saw and I conquered”.
The next topic I raised with him was the fate of Defeated Congress candidates who I strongly feel should not be given the tickets again to contest the forthcoming election. They are now become like worms meant to feast on the dead bodies. It is these corrupt candidates who did major damage to the Congress in the last election because of their arrogance, pride, dadagiri, goondagiri and Hitlerism. While they were MLA’s they acted with the common folks especially in their own constituencies, like Portuguese time Bhattkars treating others as their humiliated Mundkars. Many of them were sadistic and revengeful and their victims were only the poor Goans. All these defeated candidates were rejected by their voters because people hated them for their revengeful nature as it happened below my nose. Congress leaders in my constituency thought they are feudal lords to act with the people the way they deem it fit. Luiznho Faleiro must give them good lesson on how to deal with the people because our Congress leaders are not having genuine Congress culture of uprightness, lowliness, humility and simple life. The current Congress culture is the culture of Maharajas which should be stopped right now if Luizinho Faleiro wants success in his new assignment.
A. Veronica Fernandes,
Candolim, Goa.
Tel: 7507394349.