Abstract
The effectiveness of functioning of the urban government bodies depends to a large extent on the degree of responsiveness and accountability of the local political leadership. This chapter concludes that the mayor of CCs exercises supreme power over the administration of the CCs. Thus, the importance of mayor is a thousand times greater than the councilor. Although CC elections take place on nonpartisan manner, this election plays a significant role in molding national politics, as we observed in case of five CCs election in 2013. Thus, the political parties informally put their best efforts to win as much mayor and councilors as possible. In order to ensure effective leadership at the CC level, the recommendations given in this chapter could be taken for implementation.
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Notes
- 1.
Patrimonialism refers to describe situations where the administrative jurisdiction over certain domains are given wide leeway regarding how to act.
- 2.
Patrimonial rule has similarities to the feudal system of lord and vassal. Weber said the difference is that the feudal relationship is more ritualized and regularized, and thus more stable, than the ad hoc arrangements of patrimonialism.
- 3.
For instance, elections to five CC were held on June 15, 2016 where the voter turnout rates were 62.78 percent in Sylhet CC, 76.09 percent in Rajshahi CC, 69.79 percent in Khulna CC, 73.58 percent in Barishal CC, and 63.69 percent in Gazipur CC (http://www.ec.org.bd/).
- 4.
Elections to Rajshahi, Barisal, Khulna, and Sylhet were held on June 15, 2013, while the election to Gazipur CC was held on July 6, 2013. Number of candidates contested for mayoral seats were 7, 5, 6, 9, and 6, respectively (EWG Observation of 2013 City Corporation Elections, Election Working Group, Dhaka; September 2013).
- 5.
It is to be noted here that through Section 5 (2) of the Local Government (City Corporation) Act, 2009, one-third of the total number of wards have been made reserved for women to be elected as ward counselors, provided that women shall not be barred to contest elections in either for the post of mayor or ward councilors in reserved seats.
- 6.
It does not necessarily mean that none of the women managed to get elected for the post of either the mayor or the ward councilors in general seats. But, ground realty is that their number is very few to set example. Of course, there are women like Selina Hyat Ivy (the Mayor of Narayangong CC), but it is very difficult to find many women like her.
- 7.
The Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction Project (UPPR), funded by UKAID, works with communities in poor urban settlements across Bangladesh to improve livelihoods and living conditions. Working in partnership with the Government of Bangladesh and UN Habitat, UNDP believes that these communities are best placed to identify their main priorities. In particular, UPPR looks to create space for extremely poor women and empower them to make these decisions. Activities include improving the physical conditions of settlements, improving socioeconomic opportunities, and the development of savings and credit groups. UPPR also works to create a pro-poor policy environment, particularly through the Bangladesh Urban Forum (UPPR-UNDP 2013).
- 8.
Each street vendor is required to pay between 10 and 500 BDT per day to the so-called linesmen (illegal toll collector) (Etzold 2012).
- 9.
For more details about the “Local Government System Performance Indicator Set” and its relative scores, please refer to Chapter 1. These indicators have been designed to provide each institutional dimension with a score from 0 to 5, where 0 indicates little or no authority, autonomy, discretion, and accountability, while a score of 5 tends to indicate as highly responsive.
- 10.
BGD stands for Bangladesh and CC stands for City Corporation.
- 11.
CEO is deputed in the CC by the government to oversee whether all activities are done in accordance with the provision of the law.
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Panday, P.K. (2017). Effective Local Political Structures and Leadership. In: Reforming Urban Governance in Bangladesh. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49598-9_5
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