Mamdani takes over as New York mayor resolving to rule ‘audaciously’ as ‘democratic socialist’

New York: Zohran Kwame Mamdani has taken over as mayor of the largest US city that is the centre of finance with a firm promise to rule “expansively and audaciously” as a “as a democratic socialist”.

At the formal inauguration of his Mayoralty on New Year’s Day, radical Democratic Social Senator Bernie Sanders gave him the oath of office, declaring that his victory was over “the Democratic establishment, the Republican establishment, the president of the United States and some enormously wealthy oligarchs”.

After taking the oath of office on the steps of City Hall, Mamdani vowed to implement the socialist policies he had espoused, vowing to bring back big government.

“I will not abandon my principles for fear of being deemed radical”, he said.

He promised to bring back “the era of big government” to “improve New Yorkers’ lives”.

“We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism”, said Mamdani, who belongs to the Democratic Socialists wing of the Democratic Party.

His administration will be one that “never flinches in the fight against corporate greed, and refuses to cower before challenges”, he said.

He repeated his campaign pledges of free buses, free childcare from six months up, government-run shops, and a freeze on rent increases in housing regulated by the city.

“The billionaire class in this city and country have to got to understand that in America, they cannot have it all,” said Sanders who is among his mentors. “That America, our great country, must belong to all of us, not just a few. And that lesson begins today in New York City.”

Mamdani, who won the election last November, is the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor. A native of Uganda, he is also the firstborn in Africa.

He is the son of movie director Mira Nair, and Ugandan academic Mahmood Mamdani, who claims Indian heritage.

The formal inauguration of his mayoralty began with a prayer to Allah by Imam Khalid Latif, who said in a speech that it would be a “different” New York where “a young immigrant democratic socialist can be bold enough to run and brave enough to win not by abandoning conviction but by standing firmly with it”.

In a show of his socialist credentials, he arrived at the ceremony in an ordinary taxi, although he was also under the protection of the police, whom he had reviled “racist” and a “major threat to the people”.

Mamdani took the oath of office on two Korans, one belonging to his grandfather and the other to an African American writer, which his wife, Rama Duwaji, held as he repeated the words after Sanders.

After the ceremony, a block party was organised on Broadway with entertainment and dancing to continue the celebrations.

City officials estimated that 40,000 people were expected to attend, braving the frigid temperatures of minus 2 degrees Celsius.

Earlier at midnight, while hundreds of thousands of people celebrated the dawn of a new year in Times Square, five kilometres away, Mamdani was first sworn into office by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, a nemesis of President Donald Trump,

in a private ceremony at an abandoned, but ornate, metro station below the City Hall.

The ceremony at the stroke of midnight to technically establish his control of the city was witnessed only by his family, a select group of loyalists and the media in contrast to the jubilant celebration in the heart of the city.

Meanwhile, at Times Square, where the temperature dipped to around minus 1 degree Celsius, crowds belted out “New York, New York”, as the iconic ball embedded with crystals dropped on a pole atop a building marking the annual ritual of turning the calendar.

The ball-drop also marked the end of the mayoralty of Democrat Eric Adams, the city’s second African American mayor, who fell afoul of former President Joe Biden for complaining about the burden of illegal immigration and was hounded by his Justice Department.

Mamdani, a Shia Muslim, scored an upset in the party’s primary election to select the candidate and later at the general election.

Both times, he defeated former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo by riding on a wave of discontent over the cost of living and the traditional political machine.

He received only 51 per cent of the votes, the rest split between Cuomo and a maverick Republican, Curtis Sliwa.

Despite his claims – and that of his supportive media – that he won by a landslide, that margin of victory does not obscure the fact that almost half the city views him sceptically.

He had walked back on some of his radical statements or tried to brush them off, and notably, he has tried to reach out to the Jewish community, a broad section of whom considered some of his statements and allies as anti-Semitic.

The city fire commissioner resigned, citing Mamdani’s attitude toward Jews (even though the Jewish police commissioner agreed to stay on).

To appeal to his Islamic and radical bases, he has also made the apparently ridiculous threat of arresting Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who would be under federal Secret Service protection.

Mamdani has stepped away from extremist demands to take over “means of production”.

The thrust of his campaign was “affordability”, a rallying cry over the cost of living in the city, a centre of finance and media that has wide income disparities.

Most of his campaign proposals would need approval at the state level and require funds running into the millions.

His “tax the rich” proposals – repeated by Sanders – to fiance his programmes have met resistance because already 45 per cent of the city’s total income tax revenue of $18.5 billion comes from about 1 per cent of high earners, who could flee the city.

Mamdani has railed against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has participated in a Khalistani demonstration where foul words were shouted in religiously targeted slogans against Hindus.

He has neither dissociated himself from it nor condemned it.

IANS