Narayanganj mayor election shows city's people value development, says PM Hasina

The outcome of the Narayanganj mayor election shows the city’s people value development under the Awami League government, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 23 Dec 2016, 10:51 AM
Updated : 23 Dec 2016, 06:18 PM

She made the comment after Selina Hayat Ivy, who secured her second straight term as mayor in Thursday’s vote, came to visit her party’s chief at the Ganabhaban on Friday.

Hasina embraced the newly elected mayor as she entered the prime minister’s official residence. Ivy greeted her with a 'boat', the electoral symbol of the ruling party, made of flowers.

No untoward incident was reported in the election that saw Ivy defeat her main challenger, BNP’s Sakhawat Hossain Khan, by a huge margin.

Hasina thanked the people of Narayanganj for voting for Ivy who ran with the ruling party’s ticket in the election held on party lines for the first time. 

She said the people in Narayanganj have understood that in order for development to continue, a government must be allowed to stay in power. 

Ivy has been in public office for the past 13 years, first as a municipality chairman and then as the city’s mayor.

Hasina said the re-election will help Ivy take up new development projects alongside continuing the ongoing ones.

The prime minister recalled the development setbacks Bangladesh suffered after the Awami League lost power to the BNP-Jamaat-e-Islami coalition in 2001.

"After regaining power in 2008, the Awami League found that what it had achieved after coming to power in 1996 was lost, because the BNP-led coalition halted many development projects after winning the 2001 election," she said.

At the beginning of the Ganabhaban function, the prime minister took Ivy onstage. The Narayanganj mayor sat on her right while Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader on the left.

From Narayanganj, Awami League's district unit President Abdul Hye and city unit chief Anwar Hossain came to the programme, but MP AKM Shamim Osman, who was defeated by Ivy in the 2011 mayoral elections, did not show up.

Shamim threw his support behind Ivy before the vote this time on Hasina's orders to sink their differences in Narayanganj Awami League.