Bangladesh Protest: For 76 years, Mrs. Hasina—the five-time PM and daughter of the country’s founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman—rresigned and escaped Dhaka Monday evening following weeks of violent demonstrations over a government jobs quota.
New Delhi:
A new “interim government”—to b be advised, most likely, by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus—is emerging in crisis-struck Bangladesh after having Sheikh Hasina toppling as Prime Minister.
Bangladesh President Mohammed Shahabuddin offered his approval for that short-term administration late Monday. A meeting was held at his residence and the functionaries of the country’s Army, Navy, and Air Force, where political party leaders and civil society groups were also present.
If speculation has arisen (as it has inevitably done) since Mrs. Hasina resigned, three urgent names are on the lips, two of which are the army that seized power after Mrs. Hasina quit and purportedly gave her a 45-minute ultimatum, and her bitter rival, the former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who was jailed for corruption in the year 2018 and was recently released on order of the President.
Who is Khaleda Zia?
In 1991, Mrs. Zia, now 78 years old and unwell, sailed into power and became the first woman Prime Minister of Bangladesh.
Yes, she was re-elected in 1996, and it can be noted that the elections were neither fair nor the main opposition party’s Awami League participated. Her second term was of 12 days; a caretaker government was formed and new elections were conducted, which were finally won by Mrs. Hasina.
Mrs. Zia was overthrown but returned to power five years later.
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She was arrested on corruption charges in the year 2007. She was convicted of fraud and sentenced to imprisonment in early 2018, but poorly-health-related issues that she has been suffering from have seen her bedridden most of the time in a hospital.
