ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Wilfred de Souza wins trust vote

After 42 days of uncertainty, Chief Minister Dr Wilfred de Souza comfortably won his confidence vote today by 23 votes to 14 against. One legislator each from both sides of the 40-member Goa assembly was absent.

"I'll get back to serious work now," Dr Willy -- as he is known in Goa -- said after the session was adjourned, though the Congress camp still hopes the Supreme Court will clear the speaker's order disqualifying 10 members of the de Souza group and get the Pratapsingh Rane government back in the saddle.

But instead of the serious work Dr de Souza discussed, two former chief ministers -- Rane of the Congress and Shashikala Kakodkar of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party -- began making personal accusations about the other. No other member of the House spoke up.

Rane, in a speech laced thick with sarcasm, thanked the high court for blessing such kind of aya Ram, gaya Ram politics. He expressed confidence in the Supreme Court, and in the court of the people, as he described it, during the next election.

Kakodkar intervened at this stage to remind the House that Rane himself had engineered defections twice in the past to come into power, since Goans had elected the hung assembly. The erstwhile Rane government was formed in 1994 after four MGP members had split off and joined the Congress.

Dr de Souza later in his chamber countered Rane's allegation that they had left the Congress for personal gains. "Rane had failed to look after the personal interest of the general public", he argued in defence of his action to split the party.

Speaker Thomazinho Cardoz, against whom the high court passed strictures for having acted in a partisan manner by abandoning fair play, meanwhile, has refused to step down till the Supreme Court gives its verdict.

The ruling coalition of the Dr de Souza-led Goa Rajiv Congress, the MGP and the BJP, however, has already moved a no confidence motion against Cardoz. It is likely to be taken up in a fortnight.

Claiming that his judgment to disqualify 10 GRC members on the grounds of their failure to prove split in the original Congress was within the parameters of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, Cardoz also dismissed the allegation that he had lowered the dignity of the speaker's office.

Tell us what you think of this report