Against 5 CMs reporting to me, not even 5 MLAs come here: Luizinho
GOANEWS DESK, PANAJI | 11 April 2016 20:45 IST
Everyone wonders why Goa Pradesh Congress Committee President Luizinho Faleiro has resigned while next Assembly election is round the corner.
After inaugurating Global Goans’ Chamber of Commerce in the city today, media persons once again asked him the same question:
“Why are you not interested in Goan politics and have submitted your resignation twice?”
The reply of former chief minister of Goa was simple and straight: “I have strengthened the party as I could and I feel my job is done.”
But whenever you talk to this one-time dynamic legislator and shrewd politician of Goa, you get a feeling that the former King of Salcete is today feeling out of place in Goa.
In an emotive tone, he said:
“I had chief ministers of five states reporting to me. Here, I don’t have even five dedicated MLAs coming to you.”
Faleiro, as the blue-eyed boy of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, was controlling five Congress-ruled North Eastern states - Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim.
“The irony of Luizinho is that the North-East is his girlfriend but he has been forcibly married to Goa”, one senior Congressman told goanews.com, in a lighter vein.
As the single-digit Congress was not regaining from the wipe-out of 2012 election, Faleiro was sent back to his home state to replicate North East in Goa, replacing 10-month old PCC chief John Fernandes.
Faleiro claims he steered back all the frontal organisations of the party while launching 16 new cells, one of which was the Global Goans’ Cell launched today.
But it is a fact that he miserably failed in bringing the nine MLAs together.
In fact one of them – Babush Monseratte – has already been expelled from the party while Mauvin Godinho has jumped into the ruling BJP camp.
As Taleigao MLA Jennifer Monseratte is bound to go and join the UGDP with her husband Babush, Congress is now practically left with only six legislators, who probably meet each other only when the Assembly session is convened.
While all of them don’t report even to their opposition leader Pratapsing Rane, it is next to impossible that they would report to the party chief Luizinho Faleiro.
Thus the resignation.
But why it is not accepted even after submitting it twice to the Gandhis?
For the simple reason, disclose sources in the Congress House, that the central leaders feel it is too late to replace the PCC chief when election is hardly nine months ahead.
On the other hand, party learnt to be also reluctant to make Alex Reginald Lourenco the new PCC president, considering his overfriendly relation with Vijai Sardesai, the independent Fatorda MLA.
A camp within the Congress is opposing this move, suspecting that Lourenco is the first move of Vijai to ultimately take over the Congress before election, by merging Goa Forward and projecting him as the chief ministerial face.
Faleiro is also reportedly not interested in fishing in this muddy water of Congress and Goa Forward!
