CHAOTIC CANDOLIM GRAM SABAH.

By abruptly closing the today’s Gram Sabah of Candolim Panchayat and with the taking over the Panchayat administration by the new committee headed by Blaze, there appeared to be confusion.  Since my returning back to Goa 3 years  back this is the first time I see most chaotic meet though excellent input by the people attended this Meet where Damian Telles from Orda turned out to be the hero of the day.  By posing extremely important and relevant questions with the fluency of both the languages namely Konkani and English as he is the professional DJ & Compere, he proved that he is knowledgeable man in many of the issues Panchayat should handle but unfortunately not handling.  With the excuse of time constraint, the new Sarpanch Blaize depriving the people from asking relevant questions. At least sufficient time should be given to the attendees to get satisfaction to their queries.  

Another hurdle the Sarpanch put to the people was to ask almost every question in writing. This looked to be unfair and I don’t know under what clause of Panchayti Raj the Sarpanch acted thus, though the representative of BDO was also present.

The Meet started in a very amateur manner by the amateur like Panchayati members headed by the Sarpanch. There was no agenda circulated to the attendees in the beginning. Besides there was no electricity in the hall nor was there a Fan facility.  Only after a lengthy delay for starting the Meet perspiration and sweating of the people in the hall was stopped.  The venue of this Meet today was one Classroom of the government school in my village which incidentally was my last classroom in 1962 March when I finished my Portuguese education there.  The name and everything remained the same from 1962 till now.   

Good that Michael Lobo the local MLA and Dpty.Speaker was present for this meet to throw light on many contentious issues otherwise I don’t think anyone on behalf of Panchayat  would answer many of the queries of the people especially on ODP and CRZ. Blaze lacks the required tact and knowledge to handle and take the people with him and thru his negative body language approach and challenging type of appearance he indicated his weakness.  Because of this attitude of his, he, I feel may provoke anybody ether in the Gram Saba Meet or during his encounter with any of the villagers in his office.  The next 5 years will remain complicated. He should learn some ways of handling the public from Michael Lobo who has improved a lot acquiring all the best habits to deal with the public.

Public life is not a joke to handle, to fit in the Chair of a Sarpanch one must be a real born  Lazarus or Peter and not any Ladru or Pedru.  Today our system of public handling is collapsed because our illiterate, immature, illicit leaders are become unfit for this job.  Today what is important is money and money and more money acquired thru illicit means.  And entering into politics at Panchayati level and then at State Assembly level will flood you with ample of opportunities to acquire illicit wealth by extorting bribe from the public to build Bungalows, Restaurants, Hotels and purchase expensive Cars?  Government must first inititiate enquiry of how they acquired such a massive wealth.  From where they got these money to build the financial emire?

There was one question raised by one villager asking MichaelLobo “why there is no control over the bad activities of the Touts spread everywhere in our village who while supplying guests to the hoteliers also supply drugs and prostitutes.   Here Lobo and the Sarpanch looked  a bit sympathetic towards Touts but in one voice very vociferously the attendees demanded from Lobo to put an end to the Touts in our village because they said “we are more interested in protecting our morality”. It should be known that just because of money one should not supply one’s wife, daughter and sister. 

Before concluding this piece, as asked by Cheddo, let me tell the Panchayat members majority of whom are old ones, that they must come out openly how they have given licenses to the big hoteliers to construct their hotels without the provision for Parking areas.  Was it done thru receiving the bribe and if yes who was responsible for this “Chori”?  If what I said is wrong then they must tell the hoteliers that they have no right to park their fleet of cars on the public road and block the roads for public.  Now in Candolim Ximer there is one more big hotel is coming, are they going to have their own parking area away from the public road?  The hotel built next to Holy Cross “Mandd” is making a mess of their cars on the public road in front of Azilo and in front of Novetel Hotel Ximer it is very risky to cross the road.  

After the Gram Sabah, some villagers approached me to form a Constituency Forum.  For them my advise is this, it is very good idea because we have to control the working of the current stupid local leaders but to do this we have to have first Candolim Forum.  Is there any one coming forward? I have no trust in Panchayat leaders nor any other current leaders to do something extraordinarily good in our village especially those naturalized leaders and those “kalche porche potte” without wisdom, maturity and firm roots in Candolim. They all combined together will destroy the greatness of Candolim which is known to give birth to the world renowned hypnotist Abade Faria, the Pinto Revolutionary Priests who opposed Portuguese rule in Goa, Dr. Gustavo Monteiro a social worker who laid the solid foundation for Candolim Foot-ball activities and who was the first Candoicar Legislator during the Portuguese time when he represented our locality in the Goa Legislativo Council and his priest brother Pe. Chico Monteiro who alone single handedly defied the invasion of Goa by the Bharat serkar of Nehru. When the grandeur of our village is so high, don’t you think we must have our local leaders having high grade intellectual caliber and not “Chors and Bamtte” who are good to play “Ghoddeancho khell”?

A.Veronica Fernandes.