Posted by: m@q on: August 10, 2008
This post is not a Mayoral campaign of Chowdhury Irad Ahmed Siddiky for the Mayor Election of Dhaka 2008. This news is published here because I found it as an interesting news and nothing else.
It looks like Bangladesh is entering cyber world for election campaign! Just in Facebook I’ve seen a Bangladeshi named Chowdhury Irad Ahmed Siddiky is campaigning for the Mayor Election of Dhaka 2008. Well… it amazed me much. I’ve never seen any Bangladeshi candidate running propagnda in cyber world for any kind of election before. And I think we got the first one!
His name is Chowdhury Irad Ahmed Siddiky. He has a Facebook account. He has a regular blog. And he has a campaigning page in Facebook also! It seems that Bangladesh is entering in a new era of election campaigning. Whatever I could remember that once I had read the political blog of Sajib Wajed Joy (son of Sheikh Hasina the former PM of Bangladesh) but for some reason it is now not updating anymore. Apart of this I could not recall any personal site or blog of any of our political persons. In that sense Mr. Siddiky did a great job. Also it is not a bad idea to grab the young generations by wandering in the cyber space. To my concern, nobody had done it before. No doubt that he is a learned person but the question is how perfect is he for the Mayor of Dhaka? Well if you visit is Facebook Campaign page, you’ll find some 200 supporters, and whatever I know rest of the people of Dhaka have hardly heard his name!
I am not going to the argument about his winning chances, but… hey… it is indeed a interesting fact, isn’t it?
[...] 12, 2008 · No Comments Its great to see a candidate for Dhaka Mayor election using internet as a campaign tool. This means Bangladesh is going [...]
With regard to this candidates suitability:- I have known Irad for a number of years via internet communication. I think he ran an excellent campaign and his use of the internet is to be applauded. I think the people of Dhaka will be seeing a lot more of him in years to come. At least he has the compensation of knowing that he was not accused of any participation in the dirty tricks campaign that so many of his fellow candidates were allegedly involved in! Kudos Irad! Your time will come!
Tony
August 11, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Dear Sir,
Thank you very much for writing about my mayoral election campaign in your blog.
As a committed practioner of deliberative democracy, I believe citizen participation is fundamental to the democratic governance of our city. Engaging citizens in the deliberative process is essential to overcoming participatory apathy, cynicism toward government, and the apparent disconnect between citizens and decision-makers. A cornerstone of the deliberative process is the nature of the communication involved. The conventional one-way and speaker-focused outlets through which people participate to discuss the issues of our city are still there — I am going to have town hall meetings in each of the wards of the city in addition to public hearings on all major issues. However, in order to change the dynamic of these traditional means of engaging people through public meetings, there will also be electronic townhall meetings connecting people to decision-makers in formulation of all public policies concerning our city.
Once again, Thanks for your kind support for strengthening our democracy, our city and our country.
Chowdhury Irad Ahmed Siddiky
Candidate for the Mayor of Dhaka, 2008.
August 11th, 2008.