The 37 members of the new Baghdad Interim City Advisory Council will take up their posts from today. This will mean that Baghdad city officials will be accountable to the people they serve for the first time since before the regime of Saddam Hussein.
The Council’s primary role will be to oversee the work of the Interim Baghdad Municipal Executive Committee (a body of senior city employees and representatives of ministries providing services to Baghdad).
The Baghdad Interim City Advisory Council is a new representative body for Baghdad City citizens. The Chairman is Dr Khaled Basheer Mirza and the Vice-Chairman is Ms Siham Hattab Hamdan.
The selection of representatives has been a fair and transparent process. Each member was nominated from within the nine Interim District Advisory Councils, of which they were members. In turn, the members of these District level (Beladiya) bodies were selected from Baghdad’s 88 freely-elected Interim Neighborhood (Hayy) Advisory Councils.
The new body will provide a forum in which residents can identify and discuss local issues of concern and offer suggestions. It will be a mechanism for active participation in the rebuilding of their city’s infrastructure and institutions. Similarly, the council will provide a forum for residents to interact with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Coalition military commanders and the Interim Baghdad Municipal Executive Committee.
