Goanetters annual year-end meet is on Dec 27, 2010 (Monday) from 4-6 pm at
Institute Piedade (near Hotel Mandovi, opp Bread & More) in Panjim. Do come
along. RSVP via SMS 9822122436, [email protected] or 2409490 (after 2 pm).
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If we do not stop the rot now, we are damned
BY RAUL FERNANDES
As we are on the verge of completing this year and beginning the next, I
extend my greetings and warm wishes to all residents of Goa as well as
those who love our land.
As we look forward to another year, we cannot however ignore the fact
that Goa is teetering on the verge of a breakdown. Its ethical fabric is
being stretched. The political class is a bunch of opportunists, who use
every institution- religious, social or educational, to influence votes,
without once giving back to the same institutions, an iota of what is
promised to them.
Who benefits? The usual suspects- the powerful, friends of the powerful
and those who grease the powerful. They bypass all laws, bend them,
break them, even mould them to their benefits. No plan, regional or
Central and no law can push them off any track or highway. If deviation
is needed, to see that they are not touched, so be it. If rules meant to
be followed by you and me are flouted by them or bypassed, it is
allowed. Lawmakers and law enforcers and law breakers are not strange
bedfellows. They have become natural bed fellows. And in some cases,
they are one and the same.
This is a time when I call for an alliance. An alliance between the
people of Goa and their own newspaper - O Herald O, which has been as
much a part of their aspirations and struggles, as its tool for protest
and change. If we do not strengthen this alliance, we are doomed. And if
we do not see the need to do this now, we are damned.
I call upon all of us, the people who love and live in Goa to start a
movement of rejection immediately. Reject corruption by not paying the
policeman to protect your little drug racket, reject it by rejecting the
person who pays the policeman and take it further by rejecting the
politician who protects the policeman who protects the person who runs
the drug racket.
Secondly change politics by rejecting your time trusted MLA’s who have
made money for themselves and done you assorted favours in the process.
It isn’t easy when it’s easier to ignore a politician who makes
kickbacks out of awarding road contracts, or contracts to lay
underground power cables in lieu of an NOC for a project or some
assorted favour.
It’s a hard choice. Do you hold a politician accountable for moral
misdeeds such as forging his son’s birth certificate to allow him to
play in the under-15 Goa cricket team or just forget it for a possible
favour of getting the panchayat to allow an FAR violation for your
building. Easy choices are weak choices. With every weak choice, Goa is
lowered further and you know what - you really do not have the easy
choice. Make that hard choice and reject. And Herald will be with you.
Taking this further our Goa has always been a land of and for everyone
and of every faith, creed or colour, for ages. Goa has been a great
melting pot of cultures and faiths. Nowhere in this country do Hindus,
Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and others live in such harmony, sharing
lives and festivals. Goa is a celebration of diversity. However, of
late, I feel that these strong bonds, are sought to be threatened.
When old Portuguese street signs are torn, when useless protests over
the arrival of a Portuguese ships are taken to ridiculous melodramatic
levels, you need to reject diseased minds and diseased politics. If this
is not a handiwork of a diseased mind. It is the handiwork also of a
communal mind.
If everything about Goa’s history is pitiable, then why do sons of these
some of the so called “freedom fighters” have Portuguese passports.
Reject double standards. There is much about our Portuguese past which
works. Its systems, it mechanisms, its architecture and heritage.
Let this reiteration of this alliance between the people of Goa and O
Herald O commence. Change has to happen when the old order of things
cutting across parties needs to change. Shed the lethargy and act now.
If O-Herald-O is the voice of Goa, it needs to hear that voice. Yours.
http://www.oheraldo.in/news/Main%20Page%20News/If-we-do-not-stop-the-rot-now-we-are-damned/44151.html
