My Friend And Foe, Manohar Parrikar!

JeroninioFranciscoTorquatoAlmeida

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I FIRST MET MANOHAR at an august gathering in August 2011, after he expressed a desire to meet me. Manohar had informed my friends, Ricardo Rebello, and Armando Gonsalves, that he would like to meet me and request us to work with him as campaign strategists for the 2012 elections. I agreed and he came to meet me at Armando’s house.

We had an animated conversation about improving the state of our state, Goa, which was then mismanaged by ALIBABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES. Yes, that is what we had branded the ruling government of the day – the CM and his forty ministers in the Cabinet. The campaign, which involved pleading with people not to be misled by FREE BOOZE and BIRYANI into voting for THUGS AND THIEVES, was low-cost but achieved the desired impact. It went viral during the municipal elections and inspired public imagination and insight. The people responded, by electing better candidates.

Manohar met Armando, Ricardo, Hubert Gomes (an honest dentist who was also an Independent candidate) and requested us to replicate the campaign and plan a bigger strategy. I told him that I had some questions for him and needed to understand him better before we decided to support him. He told me to ask him whatever I wanted to and said that he would answer my questions honestly.

I cautioned him that I am an NLP and Kinesics master-practitioner who studied body language to gauge if people are being truthful or not. He candidly told me to go ahead and ask him whatever I wished to. I told him I would do it some other day. He then invited me to have lunch with him the very next day.