The Awami League (AL)-led Grand Alliance came to power with a ‘Charter for Change’ in 2009 in order to ensure good governance in Bangladesh. From 2009 to 2012, the government has taken various steps to make the civil service efficient and capable. This article strives to explore what the AL government has done to manage the civil service during 2009–12. The article analyses newspaper articles on the AL government’s actions on recruitment, promotion, and transfer. It also analyses the role of the media in exposing the state of the civil service management by conducting structured interviews of purposively sampled respondents. The article shows that the AL-led government has manoeuvred the civil service through partisan decisions on recruitment, promotion and transfer, which have left the civil service management in disarray.
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