Right choice? Parrikar's replacement in Goa cabinet has a long criminal record

Panaji: Goa Vikas Party (GVP) MLA Francisco alias Mickky Pacheco, who is all set to fill the cabinet slot left vacant by former Goa chief minister and now Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, has a rainbow range of criminal offences. His appointment as minister on Saturday, as announced by Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar, has got the Opposition tongues wagging. “Inducting convicted MLAs into the cabinet shows bankruptcy of this government. The BJP government has become bankrupt, especially when it comes to living up to the BJP’s own ideal and vision of ‘good governance’,” Congress organizing secretary Durgadas Kamat said. Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) spokesperson Trajano D’Mello says that it’s a matter of shame that someone with such an “established criminal record” will now replace Parrikar, now a defence minister. [caption id=“attachment_1804219” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Image: ibnlive[/caption] Pacheco, a former tourism minister, has been booked and charged for a wide variety of cases over the last decade and more ranging from bigamy, extortion, cheating, abettment to suicide and assaulting government servants on more than one occasion. He has also already been formally charged in four cases according to his affidavit filed ahead of the 2012 state legislative assembly elections. While the BJP has shrugged off the criminal charges against Pacheco ahead of his swearing-in, a spokesperson for Pacheco said that despite his appointment as minister, the law will follow course, as far as the offences booked against him are concerned. In Goa’s contemporary political history, Pacheco has been one of the most colourful protagonists. In the state’s smallish, but convoluted political sphere, known for its chronic instability and party hopping by politicians, Pacheco came into his own when he was elected as tourism minister in the early 2000s. Then, the bandana-wearing Pacheco, known for wearing a ring on all his eight fingers, was even profiled by BBC online which described him in this vein in 2003: “Mr Pacheco, who loves listening to Tupac Shakur and Snoop Doggy Dogg and was once bass guitarist for a local band, unabashedly adopts the bling-bling lifestyle of his hip-hop icons. He is usually kitted out in funky body hugging shirts, a bandana, gold rings and clunky chains”. But in his political journey from 2003 to 2014, Pacheco has collected more than just bling along the way. His election affidavit filed before the state Chief Electoral Officer in 2012 lists 10 criminal cases booked against him, several of them of serious nature. Four cases deal with cheating and forgery in land deals one filed at the Quepem police station and two at the Margao police station. 50-year-old Pacheco has been booked for bigamy by his wife Sara Pacheco and is being tried on the basis of her complaint in 2010 under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 at a trial court in Margao. Responding to Sara’s complaint then, Pacheco had challenged the media to prove his guilt. “You prove that I am married twice and I will step down from ministry. I am married only once, to Sara. I can have as many women as I want,” Pacheco then told a press conference. Earlier, in 2002, Mickky was booked for road rage, when he assaulted a driver of a state corporation bus. Pacheco also courted controversy in 2009, when a traffic police constable complained to the local police that the minister had abused and threatened him, when he was on duty in Margao, a town in south Goa 35 kms from here. But the criminal case which is proving to be a bane for Pacheco, a former NCP legislator, is the assault on a junior engineer attached to the State Electricity Department in 2006, which got him a conviction and six months imprisonment sentence. The conviction was later upheld by an appellate court and subsequently by the Bombay High Court bench in Goa, before in July this year, the Supreme Court granted him relief by staying the conviction. In 2010, Pacheco was also being probed by the US government for allegedly running an immigration and money laundering racket. The Central Bureau of Investigation had summoned Pacheco, then an NCP legislator, for questioning, after the Union ministry for external affairs, on a request from the US State department, asked the agency to question Pacheco in a preliminary enquiry. “I am ready to face any inquiry and my bank accounts are transparent, which could be probed by any agency. I am shocked to read what has appeared in the newspaper. My overseas employment agency has ceased to exist since last four years since I separated with my wife,” Pacheco had told reporters after being questioned by the CBI, at the agency’s Goa office. Pacheco had claimed that the allegations of money laundering were false and that his account was being used by persons recruited by his employment agency to send money back to their families from abroad. “They used to deposit money in the account and I used to give it back to their families. I have bank statements. It is all in the open,” he had said. While Pacheco was not contactable for comment his close aide Lyndon Monteiro, when contacted for comment about the criminal cases which were filed against the minister-to-be said: “Law will take its own course”. BJP vice president Dr. Wilfred Mesquita said that the decision to appoint a minister was taken by the chief minister and his MLAs. “His cases are one or two, here and there… They won’t affect the image of the party,” Mesquita said, when asked how a party which believes in good governance could rope-in a criminally tainted legislator in the cabinet. “It’s not the decision of the party. They may consult the party, but the ultimate decision is of the legislators,” Mesquita said. Pacheco’s Goa Vikas Party has two MLAs in the state legislative assembly, including himself, and has been supporting the BJP-led coalition government in Goa.