View From The Outer Harbour By: Thalmann Pradeep Pereira
LIGHT UP THE LAMPS ! ! So the by-elections are over and the results are also out. No doubt, much newsprint will be utilised to analyse the results and much public time will be spent in discussing the outcome. The main political parties will also be anxiously going through the booth-wise results to find out trends and patterns of voting behaviour. Government-formation will also be high on the cards. A pretty busy and hectic schedule for BJP, Congress and NCP, without of course forgetting MGP and UGDP. The moment President�s Rule is lifted and the Goa Assembly is revived from its suspended animation, the High Court�s doors will also be knocked in respect of Filipe Neri Rodrigues� signature, Mathany Saldanha�s political party�s whip, and the voting rights of Rajendra Arlekar and Dayanand Mandrekar. We may also have some more election petitions by the losing candidates of the 5 by- elections. The Supreme Court would also be looking into questions of �office of profit� and �corrupt practices� with stay applications appended. A pretty heavy and hectic judicial calendar it will be. And the common citizens of Goa will also be very busy with their own heavy and hectic schedules of waking up in the morning, brushing their teeth, having breakfast, catching buses, toiling the whole day and returning home dead tired in the evening to have dinner, watch a little TV and go off to bed: only to get up the next day, brush the teeth, have breakfast, catch the bus�� There will of course be the daily newspaper, with its banner-headlines, to give some comic relief in an otherwise drab routine, and also the cinema with its 3-hour Hindi song-and-dance-and-drama to act as a soothing balm. There will also be the usual claims that Goa is now the No. 1 state in the whole world! There will also be some people fretting about why things do not change. And there be a few activists with placards in hand to protest against injustice. And, above all, there will be articles in the press and sound-bytes on TV analyzing everything and telling the common citizen that he has only himself to blame for his sorry plight and that the next time elections come, he should think before acting. And there may be a few more by-elections, if not in Vasco and Siolim, then in some other constituency where the current legislator perceives the grass to be greener on the other side of the fence. And perhaps, we can expect more forgeries of signatures, more pandemonium at Porvorim and more parades at Dona Paula. And trust the pundits to blame it all on the Common Man! It is futile to expect the Common Man to revolt unless the objectives and the path of the revolt are spelt out first, at least with a minimal clarity. �The fault lies in the stars�. If the star had not shined above Bethlehem, the Three Wise Men, despite all their wisdom, would have had nowhere to go. Even God could not have pushed Man out of his lethargy, if He had not put up a shining star on the blue banner of the sky. The �politicians�, it is said, make hay while the sun shines. The five by- elections have showed us how low they can stoop to put up an artificial sun in the sky, so that they can make hay even in the night! It is high time that all the democratic-minded persons in Goa come forward to pool their meagre resources, in order to put up at least one artificial star on the horizon, if only to remind the Common Man that there were also shepherds on the meadows of Bethlehem. Till the next Monday, then, Happy Thinking! [EMAIL PROTECTED] �Harbour Times� (06-6-2005)
