Will Young Turks steal the show?

Robin Reda became the youngest mayor of France when he was elected from Juvisy sur Orge. After the victory, which undoubtedly caught the attention of his countrymen, 22-year-old Reda got a phone call from no one less than former president Nicolas Sarkozy who urged him to build his career as a politician.

Not yet 40, Naheed Kurban Nenshi was reelected as mayor of Calgary in Canada’s Alberta with 74% votes in 2013. That he was successful is all but obvious.

There are dozens of other instances where voters are embracing the more youthful representatives, who in turn are changing things for the better. But in Bangladesh, barring a few exceptions like Zunaid Ahmed Palak, Shahriar Alam, and some others, there are no instances of young leaders coming to the fore.

Dhaka’s mayoral race, however, offers a refreshing change of scenario. The candidates are comparatively young. And more refreshingly, they have not been part of the noxious political machinery long enough to have become tainted themselves.

However, given all these examples, the reality in Dhaka may not be as romantic as some of these cities.

Local government elections here in Bangladesh are necessarily non-partisan in nature, meaning that political parties cannot directly nominate candidates unlike in the national parliamentary polls; instead they can only extend their support to aspirants.

Despite that, since the inception of city corporations in the big cities, it has always been seasoned politicians — Mohammad Hanif, Sadeque Hossain Khoka, Mohiuddin Ahmed, Badruddin Kamran, and Khairuzzaman Liton to name some — who have enjoyed the necessary political backing to have eventually triumphed in competitive coting.

But does that mean that these political stalwarts have succeeded in bringing in their decades of experience into the city administration and build truly livable cities? Nobody will dare say that they have.

Years of development rush (read uncontrolled and unplanned urbanisation) has robbed Dhaka of its heritage and prestige, turning it into one of the most densely populated and polluted cities in the world.

The air has turned poisonous; water in the rivers in and around the city has been polluted to such extents that fish – or for that matter most marine organisms — cannot survive.

Hundreds of skyscrapers have shrouded the city’s skyline. If Dhaka had a voice, it would have cried out in sheer agony.

The seasoned politicians who have been at the helm of city administration for decades, must take the blame for the ordeals of a city that could have had a better fate.

So, time has come to reorganise the capital, to build a more humanitarian capital; a green and livable city.

The young mayor hopefuls like Tabith M Awal, Mahi B Chowdhury, Zonayed Saki, Sayeed Khokon, and Abdullah Al Kafi do not have the experience that some of their predecessors had. Then again, experience has never brought us anything good in the past.

These young turks who are running for mayor in the country’s capital have visited many modern, livable cities around the world and have seen what it takes to make a city livable.

Moreover, they are young and appear to be very enthusiastic. They have nothing to lose and nobody to fear. And they have a much better chance of taking down corruption for good than their experienced forerunners.

Of those five names already mentioned, Tabith, at 36, is the youngest, and none of the others is above 50.

This year’s city elections indicate another good thing about the country’s future. These young mayor hopefuls have stamped a slam on the face of those who believe that young guns are not interested in joining politics.

As the major political parties do not practice democracy within their fabric, these young leaders have taken this as a chance to come to the forefront and show people what the energy and aggression of youth can do.

Last year, Rosie Corrigan became the mayor of Selby at the age of 21 — the youngest ever in the history of Britain. In 2008, Jeremy Yamaguchi, a college student, became the mayor of Placentia in California, at the age of 22.

Just Google their names and you will see that these two young people have not done bad at all.