WITH THE AMI PANJEKAR PANEL!

Those who have been around for donkey’s years must go…Panjim civic polls coming up on March 11, please go and cast your vote

IF you are a conscientious Panjekar you must know that the civic elections are here again, on March 11, and if you pride yourself on being a caring resident and if you want any changes for the better in the upkeep of Goa’s capital city – more town that city still – you will go out and cast your vote and count for something at least. There is no life and living if you don’t count for something.
Nobody wants Panjim or Panaji to become an slum city along Mumbai and Delhi vertical slums…so go out and vote okay no matter how educated or uneducated you are. It’s not beneath anyone dignity to go out and vote. We, citizens and residents of Panjim, have let politicians take us for granted long enough. Long enough!
Over the years we have seen how the political discourse of governance has become a political discourse of business for feathering political dynastic families. Instead of any sensitivity and sensibility in the development and maintenance, constant up-gradation of public infrastructure. The roads get tarred but the pavement and drainage edges continue to dip into narrow pitfalls inviting tragedies galore. Pavements and kerbsides are in a perennial mess. Also encroached by high class and low class businesses! Who cares?
I’VE lived up and down Panjim for some 25 years now and I’ve seen a few good things happening but mostly several bad things – with all the casinos rooted on the Mandovi river and all the casino dividers dotting smart city landscapes – might as well re-name Panjim as Casino Town! Even Panjim’s one main thoroughfare which is the Campal promenade or DB Marg – once upon a time in the 70s such a wonderful shaded by grand happy trees –is now barely and rudely maintained. Not to speak of all the come lately fancy shining steel bus-stops which looking at make me at least go goggle-eyed…I mean all that shining steely light reflecting back to catch the eyes (if you know what I mean)!
Anyway, this is to say this time around it’s a good idea and I’m rooting for Utpal Parrikar’s Ami Panjekar panel of candidates. May they all win so that Panjim gets a new team of newer, fresher, younger (not sons of distinguished fathers) at the CCP offices – many on the panel are my friends like Uma Volvoikar, standing from Ward 2 at Caranzalen (an SC ward for women); there’s also Sheetal Naik, Shubhada Shirgaonkar Rupesh, former mayor Surendra Furtado, Jack Ajit Sukhija I would just love to see as Panjim’s new mayor!
Then there is Vaibhav Salgaonkar, Ghanashyam Shrikant (Krish) Nasnodkar, Shubhada Prabhakar Dhond, Madhavi Subhash Amonkar, Nitin Narvekar, Jyoti Masurkar who’s a jolly good hard working person I’m familiar with, then Neha Kavlekar, Tarkar Pednekar Bhalchandra Rajiv, Diodita Pereire, Ashish Ranganath Nagvekar and some more. Ami Panjikar is fielding candidates for all 30 wards…the CCP polls can be easily won for the required number of voters is small in wards of 1,000 to 5,000 voters. Funny or not funny, majority don’t vote. So much for democracy being taken for a ride….

Sorry story of even the civic polls is that only the captive working class migrant voters keep bringing back the same old victors, those who have feathered their own dynastic nests several times over or so to speak! The challenge is still getting the educated folk and forever complaining middle class folk – to stop being cynical and to take enough interest to vote – if you don’t have a conscience and don’t vote you’re a dead loss as a resident.
MARCH 11, civic polls, I appeal to you to go and vote for your Ami Panjikar candidate and check out the symbol please. Don’t get confused for there are many tricks afoot to trick voters. Let’s look forward to seeing a new, cleaner, happier capital city Panjim! On that note it’s avjo, selamat datang, poiteverem, au revoir, hasta la vista and vachun yeta here for now.