From Pulpit to Podium: Holy Lies, Unholy Ties Are Defeating Democracy (Soter)

 Published as Lead Article in oHeraldo, August 25, 2025

Over the years, Goa’s politics has shown the way for the mockery of democracy. By successfully engineering defections, promoting illegalities to create vote banks, protecting such vote banks, to now, a couple of decades later, regularising these illegalities to pamper vote banks. With the recent amendments to some laws, the precedent for circumventing court verdicts against illegalities has been set. What’s even more disgracing is that all such abuse of power gets justified as the duty of law makers to draft laws that safeguard citizens and protect them from court verdicts against illegalities. The noise for relaxing the sound ban timings has now gotten louder and the public can only expect more of such nuisance to be endorsed if such political abuse is tolerated.

When illegalities get legitimised and destructive projects become part and parcel of investment promotion in governance, these are enough signs of a chronic social and political crisis. If citizens have to go to court in order to overturn the bad policies and checkmate destructive projects permitted by the very government they elect for their security and welfare, only for laws to get tweaked later to neutralise the court's directions, these are no signs of social progress but regression. Brute numbers and popularity cannot become the criteria for deciding what is ethically and morally healthy in democratic governance.

Several years ago, when a seasoned and popular politician heading the government was questioned by me in a casual conversation on his patronage to illegalities and dropping of corruption charges or reinstating of corrupt bureaucrats, which he had exposed while in the opposition, the response was, “this is compulsion of politics”. This was an honest admission which required guts.

A brief stint in active politics has shown me that survival in Goa’s politics hinges around satisfying the political financiers and pampering a significant number of unscrupulous citizens among the electorate who seek their selfish interests; this rot runs down to the gram sabha. Even some religious leaders who appear to condemn political corruption in public may have no qualms of conscience to demand undue favours from politicians in private. It’s the citizens’ misplaced expectations from the elected representatives to perform what is not their constitutional duty that sets unhealthy precedents in politics. This has only gotten more chronic over time. In this 21st century Goa, politicians with healthy principles and ethics stand no chance in elections, no matter how innocent the society may pretend to be in this current mess.

The current crisis, which Goans are faced with, is nothing but the logical consequence of throwing the baby out with the bath water, dumping a bird in hand for two in the bush and jumping from the frying pan into the fire, all under illusions and delusions of furthering political change and eradicating corruption. The misconception within the minority community, more than a decade ago, that communalism was restricted to a fringe group and a scare created by the Congress party to protect its vote bank has blown in the face. The citizens of this highly literate State, conditioned by centuries of a ‘sosegado’ culture, have been content putting God to the test by persisting in political ignorance and recklessness over the years and expecting divine wrath to strike at evil doers.

When public memory is short and coupled with an absence of a culture for critical thinking there can be no lessons learnt to prevent the repeat of past blunders. The minority community which overestimates its political nuisance value keeps consuming old wine in new bottles, now with 'desi' brands getting replaced by ‘global’ labels for the forthcoming Assembly elections in 2027. Perhaps it is the consumer fascination with Indian made foreign liquor brands which is now being replicated in the political market. Given the outcomes in the past, one can well guess the political fallout from issues like Romi script, Minority Commission and anti-conversion law being raked up before elections.

The manipulative tool of ‘Saam, Daam Dand, Bhed’ (persuasion, reward, punishment and division) employed by an authoritative regime has been effective in distracting and disrupting the political focus in the community. Further, the dysfunctional mechanism of herding, reactivity, blame displacement, victimhood and quick-fix mentality which drives people’s activism has blinded reason and aided self-destruction. With the complacency of citizens when it comes to political responsibility and their preoccupation with religious devotions and cultural entertainment 365 days of the year, where is the space and scope left for serious social and political reflection and community strategy?

The random and arbitrary street parades masterminded by self-publicity craving middlemen to protest against selective injustices and atrocities will not bring peace. Such predictive reactions fuel further polarisation and give the desired publicity for the fanatical groups to keep themselves at the centre of the public debate. The victimhood injected in the hate targeted communities makes them vulnerable to exploitation by fake messiahs who take their followers round in circles to enjoy power and money.

It was Pope Francis in his encyclical ‘Fratelli Tutti’ (brothers and sisters all) while appealing for ‘a better kind of politics’ who said, “global society is suffering from grave structural deficiencies that cannot be resolved by piece meal solutions and quick fixes. Much needs to change, through fundamental reform and major renewal…” Earlier in his apostolic exhortation ‘Evangelii Gaudium’ (the joy of the Gospel), the Pope had emphasised that ‘change is a process which matures in time and space, and not isolated events’.

As long as citizens remain trapped in the dysfunctional political dynamics, only to be controlled by manipulative political and religious leadership, the chances for any political renewal remains bleak. The cycle of control by such manipulative leadership will need to be dismantled by citizens for a different politics and leadership to emerge.

(The author has worked with community initiatives related to Drug and Alcohol Abuse Prevention, HIV/AIDs Prevention, Panchayati Raj, Anti-Corruption, Environment Protection and Social Justice.)