Dear Vijai,
In March 2017, I had publicly warned and cautioned you that the BJP would use you and conveniently dump you like a hot potato. The predicted has now happened and you have been overnight left in the lurch powerless and speechless reaping what you had greedily sown. You chose to ignore the natural law of Karma that says ‘What goes around comes around’ whatever you do will come back to you at some point. A deliberate act of folly all because you were blinded by the lure of the Rupee and the glitter of the Casinos.
It is so intriguing that you have had the rank audacity of accusing Congress MLAs to be acting like monkeys wanting to cross over. All this after your very own grand betrayal of Goa and Goans on 11th March 2017. It is worth remembering that Monkeys are well known for eating and devouring coconuts! Needless to state that the COCUNUT is the symbol of your Goa Forward Party which over the last two years has swayed Goa very backwards.
Vijai, you are the last person that should speak against the Congress, which is a party you owe it all to. Your fate may soon be no different to that of our once common friend Pandurang Madkaikar who is today facing the wrath of Divine justice.
Having once been your very close friend and well wisher like our distinguished Dr Francisco Colaco, I may be upsetting you, but by maintaining silence I would be hurting thousands of Goans across Goa and around the world that now hold you in rank bitterness. By failing to speak my heart out, I would be abdicating in my duty to stand up for something that has been intrinsically wrong.
The people of Goa had once thought and hoped that you were the future of Goa. They were all for your promised : Goem, Goenkar & Goenkarponn. In the 2017 Assembly elections they supported you thinking that you were a beacon of hope to fight the Corruption, Nepotism and the U turns of the BJP as a result of your outbursts against the BJP. But in double quick time your lust for power and that moolah got the better of you and you became a chameleon overnight for which you will never be forgiven. The people of Goa will never pardon you for having in March 2017 had the cheek of betraying our Goem, shocking every Goenkar, and that you deceitfully chose to selfishly forsake your very own Goenkarponn.
In the lightning speed in which you had selfishly embraced the BJP overnight, you committed the mother of all U turns. Regrettably you disgraced yourself, your family, your Constituency and most importantly your Goa. A Judas you proved to be. The great Goan and your uncle, the late Ravindra bab Kelekar and your late dear sister our very great literary icon Madhavi must have been rolling in their heavenly abode in disbelief of how you rashly took Goa and Goans for a ride.
Vijai, you cannot and will never ever be trusted by Goans again. I was infact stunned that you dared trust the BJP, a party against which you had rightly and publicly spewed very nasty venom against and which had then even tried its best to implicate and arrest you in that infamous Louis Berger case.
You chose to face the public wrath and condemnation for the rest of your life for having deeply hurt every Goan. But despite your betrayal, Goa will overcome and survive to see Goem, Goenkar and Goenkarponn.
As Agriculture Minister you have fooled us that our vegetation will grow, as Forest Minister you asked us to plant more trees, but as the Town & Country Planning Minister you in broad daylight destroyed our many of our remaining fields and hills while not sparing even our scarce forest cover so that you could make merry in connivance with the real estate mafia of which you have for decades been a very integral part. You failed to practice any fantasy you preached.
As was predicted by me two years ago, the BJP has shown you your place by doing a U-Turn similar to your U-Turn. I only pray that on account of your blatant and unforgivable sins, that your family does not have to face the brunt.
Vijai, may I leave you with those worthy words of Billy Graham, “When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; but when character is lost, all is lost”.
Ribandar 12th July 2019 Aires Rodrigues
