Dhaka South city Mayor Syed Khokon has been left out of the upcoming mayoral race with the ruling Awami League giving it’s ticket to Barrister Fazle Noor Taposh who stepped down as the lawmaker for Dhaka-10 after the announcement.
According to sources within the ruling party, the nomination slipped from Khokon’s hand due to his controversial remarks, failure to stamp out mosquitoes and not being able to make good on the pledges made to the citizens.
However, Khokon claims that he has never been lax in his duties as mayor.
Urban city planners said that while Khokon did work and had more opportunities, his controversial remarks led to him losing the party’s mandate.
Khokon, who got the time to serve and entire term, made headlines when he termed the dengue statistics as rumours.
“The statistics of 350,000 people being affected with dengue is imaginary,” he had said on Jul 25, amid the worst outbreak to hit Bangladesh.
Moreover, Khokon got into a few political feuds as well which reportedly tarnished the ruling party’s image.
In 2017, the ruling Awami League had called a rally in Azimpur which was countered by a program by Khokon. A garbage truck was left at the venue for which Khokon was blamed.
Following the incident he got into strife with the party’s the-then Dhaka metro South General Secretary Shahe Alam Murad and faced criticism as well.
Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader told the media last week that leaders with clean images would be given the party mandate for the mayoral race.
Moreover, Khokon had pledged to free footpaths, modernizing the waste management, preventing fires, free space for parks amongst other things which he had failed to implement.
“Syed Khokon said a lot of things and did a lot of things too. But his choice of words were wrong which led to his downfall,” said urban planner Mobassher Hossain.
Bangladesh Institute of Planners (BIP) General Secretary Dr Adil Muhammad Khan said that Khokon had a lot of opportunities to do good work in the future and he failed to implement his promises which were beyond his jurisdiction.
Khokon is the son of late Dhaka mayor Mohammad Hanif who was also the chief of the party’s Dhaka metro unit.
He joined the Dhaka metro unit in 1999, was appointed the organising secretary in 2004 and went on to become the unit’s vice president.
He defeated BNP's Mirza Abbas during the mayoral polls of 2015.