ASHLEY DO ROSARIO
PANAJI
Unarguably, she will be counted among Goa’s most affable personalities, despite being a politician.
When news that Victoria Fernandes, a former minister, four-term St Cruz MLA and a firebrand activist vocal, on almost every socio-political and current affairs issue the State has faced since the mid-1960s, began trickling in on Saturday morning, the reaction of most was one of disbelief.
The journalist community, for instance, was scurrying around to confirm and reconfirm that she had indeed passed away, even though it was known for some time that in her mid-Eighties, she wasn’t keeping good health.
VICTORIA SHOOTS
INTO FAME...
Opinion Poll campaign
Fondly called ‘Mummy’, Fernandes first shot to fame when in her youth she was among a small group of women who fanned out across the length and breadth of Goa to campaign for the Opinion Poll.
She was part of the team led by Goa’s first Opposition Leader Dr Jack Sequeira, which spearheaded the movement against Goa’s merger with Maharashtra, which ended with the victory in the plebiscite historically known as Opinion Poll in 1967.
Ramponkar agitation
She was also deeply involved in the Ramponkar agitation of 1978-79, closely associated with its leader the late Matanhy Saldanha. It championed the cause of the traditional fishermen who were at that time threatened by large scale mechanisation of fishing with the backing of the then Sashikala Kakodkar-led MGP government.
Official Language agitation
Fernandes also played a significant role in the official language agitation of 1985-87 which eventually led to Konkani achieving official language status, and shortly later, Goa attaining full-fledged statehood in May 1987.
In the political field too, Fernandes was here, there and everywhere, latching on to issues both big and small.
A ROLLER COASTER POLITICAL INNINGS
She served as MLA of St Cruz for four terms, winning her first assembly election as an Independent in 1994. She later joined the Congress and won on the national party’s ticket thrice, consecutively, in 1999, 2002 and 2007.
Her innings in the Congress, however, ended bitterly in her last term as MLA, when in 2007 she rebelled after the party ignored her claims to a cabinet berth in the Digambar Kamat government on grounds of her seniority and for representation to women.
She briefly joined hands with the Late Manohar Parrikar who was then the Opposition in a failed coup attempt to topple the Kamat government.
Just as it seemed she was building her bridges with the party as the 2012 assembly elections approached, the Congress ditched her and her son Rudolf Fernandes’ claim to the St Cruz ticket. Instead the party nominated her arch-rival and current Panaji MLA, Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate, whom she had publicly taken on head-on over his dubious planning changes for the St Cruz constituency through the North Goa Planning and Development Authority’s Outline Development Plans.
For health and age-related reasons, Fernandes, however bowed out of electoral politics and instead fielded her son Rudolf as an Independent in the 2012 polls. But the mother-son duo fell short and failed to retain the St Cruz seat, conceding it to the Congress-sponsored Monserrate. The defeat was attributed by many a commentator to the unflattering reputation of her son rather than the dwindling of her own popularity.
In her nearly two-decade long career in the Goa legislative assembly, Fernandes seized almost every opportunity to raise her voice on issues that matter to the common man and to the larger interests of the State.
She also served as minister for a few months in the government of Luizinho Faleiro in 1998-99 and later in the cabinet led by current South Goa MP Francisco Sardinha, in 1999-2000.
Her loss will be felt by many, but most by the forum of ex-legislators and serving law-makers, who meet once a year to commemorate the Legislators Day, where with her stage and dramatics talent she would enthral them and all.
