Sheikh Hasina. File.
| Photo Credit: AP

Bangladesh’s deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League would not be allowed to participate in elections, a key adviser of Muhammad Yunus’s interim government said on Saturday (January 25, 2025).

“The elections will be contested among pro-Bangladesh groups only,” said Mahfuz Alam, a top leader of the Anti-Discrimination Movement, which spearheaded the mass uprising that toppled Hasina’s Awami League regime and forced her to flee the country on August 5 last year.

Addressing a street rally at central Chandpur district, Mr. Alam said only former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Jamaat-e-Islam and other “pro-Bangladesh” groups would carry on their politics in the country. He added that either of these “will establish future governance through a fair electoral process”.

“But Awami League’s rehabilitation will not be allowed in this country,” said Alam, a de facto minister without portfolio in Chief Adviser Yunus’s administration.

Mr. Alam stated that no election would take place until “minimum reforms” were implemented and institutions, allegedly destroyed by the “fascist Hasina government,” were restructured.

Initially appointed by Mr. Yunus as a special assistant in his government, Mr. Alam later served as an adviser in his interim cabinet. At a function on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly last year, Mr. Yunus introduced Mr. Alam as the “main brain” behind the “meticulously” designed student-led movement that toppled the past regime.

The Awami League has been virtually out of the open political landscape since August 5, 2024, with most of its leaders and Ms. Hasina’s cabinet members either in jail on murder and other criminal charges or on the run at home and abroad.

Earlier, the BNP said it was against banning any political party, visibly weighing its support for archrival Awami League’s existence in the political field.

It demanded elections in the quickest possible time after minimal reforms, calling it a continued process.

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir recently said the reform agenda undertaken by the interim government could take 10 years and an unelected government must not continue for a longer period.

Amid speculations about the formation of a youth-led new political party by the student leaders, BNP said the interim government would lose its credibility if figures of the government formed a party staying in power.

Meanwhile, Local Government and Youth and Sports Adviser Asif Mahmud Sajeeb Bhuiyan, another leader of the Anti-Discrimination Movement, in a Facebook post on Saturday, said “There will be efforts or debates about who is more advanced in doing people’s welfare”.

Information Affairs adviser Nahid Islam, another student leader said if required the advisers of the government would resign from their posts to form the party and contest the future election.

Last month, Mr. Yunus said the next general election in the country could take place by the end of 2025 or the first half of 2026. He had, however, said the timing of the election would largely depend upon the political consensus and the extent of the reforms that must be carried out before it.

Muhammad Yunus
| Photo Credit: AP

After months of maintaining a low profile, the deposed Awami League of Bangladesh has begun to mobilise both inside the country and in different parts of the world. The political party that ruled Bangladesh for over a decade and a half faced serious setbacks when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Cabinet colleagues were deposed and fled the country in August. However, over the past few weeks, AL leaders have begun to challenge the interim government headed by Chief Adviser Mohammad Yunus.

Earlier this week, the joint secretary of the Awami League, Mahbubul Alam Hanif, lashed out against the Yunus government following the recommendations made by the Constitution Reforms Commission seeking fundamental changes to the state of Bangladesh. In a statement, the Awami League leader said in Dhaka that the “commission has recommended removal of secularism, socialism, and nationalism from the 1972 constitution and the recommendations are not acceptable at all.”

Former Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, Hasan Mahmud, is known to have taken refuge in Belgium. and the All European Awamii League has been holding multiple meetings in Belgium protesting against growing instances of mob justice and breakdown in police system and administration.

The main overground political party Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) that was in sync with the interim government in August and September is no longer extending unconditional support. On Sunday, General Secretary of BNP Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir echoed the concerns as enunciated by Mr. Hanif of the Awami League. Mr. Mirza Fakhrul said that the far reaching changes suggested by the reform commissions will not be accepted without all party consensus. The statement was made following an event on the 89th birth anniversary of founder of the BNP and late Presdent Ziaur Rahman in Dhaka.