AFTER RESOUNDING VICTORIES IN SOUTH GOA LOK SABHA AND BENAULIM ZILLA PANCHAYAT BY-POLL...
PANAJI
There's no gainsaying the fact that the lion's share of the credit for the success of the Opposition in the South Goa Lok Sabha elections goes to the strategy of forging an alliance and pitting Captain Viriato Fernandes as a joint candidate.
There arguably may have been some other factors that may have also contributed to Captain Fernandes' win, like his 'fresh face', outspoken demeanour and some campaign-related incidents related to his army service which went in his favour. But by and large the consolidation of the anti-BJP vote is the single most contributing factor to the South Goa outcome.
It is therefore not surprising that leaders of the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), in particular Leader of the Opposition Yuri Alemao and the Benaulim MLA, Venzy Viegas -- are buoyant about the prospects of such an alliance continuing at the State level. And, the combined 55 per cent vote share of these parties at the 2022 assembly elections against the ruling BJP's 33 per cent apart from the Revolutionary Goans Party's (RGP) 11-odd per cent is what is driving the local leaderships of the parties to explore such an alliance for the 2027 Assembly elections.
It was why, immediately after the Lok Sabha elections, the experiment was taken forward at the Benaulim ZP bye-election and the Congress backed off from sponsoring a candidate leaving the seat for the AAP. Expectedly the strategy paid rich dividends with AAP's Joseph Pimenta winning the bye-elections with a massive 3,000-plus vote margin.
None-the-less, sustaining the momentum of this new found 'Opposition unity' for the next three years, up until the next assembly elections fall due in Goa in 2027, will be a herculean task for leaders of both the Congress and AAP and many political analysts say it will be a 'political miracle' if it is pulled off.
Hiccups in Opposition bloc
Although the seven-member Opposition bloc in the Goa legislative assembly has broadly put up a somewhat united front in the House, hiccups and fissures within this broad formation are visible, perhaps contributed by the fact that six MLAs are first-timers and Goa Forward Party's (GFP) Vijai Sardesai, is the lone legislator who is in his third term.
At the Lok Sabha elections, however, all and sundry managed to keep the internal fissures, ego and personality clashes aside and put up a united front but it could be a challenge at the State level where the electoral turf is drastically different and has to be managed at the micro, grass-root level.
Another major hurdle for the alliance to sustain till 2027 will be the tough task of evolving a consensus among all the constituents -- Congress, AAP and GFP -- besides the others like NCP-SP and TMC on sharing the 40 seats.
It is very unlikely that Sardesai's GFP, currently a lone-MLA party, will be reconciled to a limited influence within the alliance at a time when expansion for the regional party seems uphill with the Revolutionary Goans Party (RGP) trampling on its ideological "Goenkarponn" space.
The contest for seats allocation could be even more fierce between the Congress and the AAP, what with these two parties enjoying influence and reach in more or less common seats in the old conquest talukas of Bardez, Tiswadi, Salcete and Mormugao which collectively account for 24 seats. The demands in terms of seats for the other parties like NCP-SP, TMC and Shiv Sena (UBT), however, may not be difficult for the alliance to accommodate, much as sharing the seats in the old conquest talukas, known to be the home turf of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Past experiences of
alliance politics
Results of past experiments with electoral alliances by the Opposition in Goa are encouraging for the proposal of the current leaders of the INDI Alliance. Right from 1989, when the Opposition united against the then ruling Congress party for the first time, the move paid dividends.
MGP which was the principal Opposition party then brought under its umbrella a couple of smaller parties, including the Late Mathany Saldanha's Gomant Lok Pokx, and the results were encouraging. Both Congress and MGP were tied at 18 seats each. The two Independents who won went their separate ways and the tie was only broken when the Congress won both, Curtorim and Velim, which had been infamously countermaded, a couple of months later.
Five years later in 1994, the alliance between the MGP and the BJP, came close to winning but fell just two seats short of the ruling Congress in numbers.
An Opposition Alliance however captured outright power in the 2012 elections when the Manohar Parrikar-led BJP tied up with the Dhavlikar brothers-led MGP for the first time after 1994 to reduce the Congress to a single digit tally of nine.
National equations at
the time crucial
Much as the alliance between the various Opposition parties in Goa for the recent Lok Sabha election was dictated by the sentiments and equations that developed between the constituent political parties at the national level, the proposal of the Opposition parties in Goa to take on the ruling BJP unitedly in 2027 will also depend on what the equations are between these parties nationally at the time. It is on this front alone that the prospects of an united INDI Alliance in Goa at the 2027 assembly elections look dim, especially in light of the topsy-turvy political chemistry between the Congress and AAP nationally.
