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Bangladesh president dissolves parliament, orders Khaleda Zia’s release

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Digital Desk

2 years ago

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s president Mohammed Shahabuddin dissolved the parliament on Tuesday afternoon following the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday.

Earlier, the Students Against Discrimination set an ultimatum to dissolve the parliament by 3:00 pm today.

The President also ordered the release of Begum Khaleda Zia, former PM and leader of the main opposition Party Bangladesh Nationalist, from years of House arrest.

The press release issued from the President’s residence, Bangabhaban, stated, “Based on the decision from a meeting of President Shahabuddin with the heads of the three armed forces, leaders of various political parties, representatives of civil society, and leaders of the Students Against Discrimination movement, the national parliament has been dissolved”.

It also said that the process of releasing those detained in the student movement and various cases from July 1 to August 5 has begun, with many already being freed.

A key organizer of Bangladesh’s student protests, Nahid Islam, has called for Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus to head an interim government. Yunus, who is currently in Paris for the Olympics, called Hasina’s resignation the country’s “second liberation day”.

Opposition leader Khaleda Zia released

The country’s ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia has been released from years of house arrest, Bangladesh National Party (BNP) spokesperson AKM Wahiduzzaman told AFP.

Zia’s release, also confirmed by the president’s office, comes as student leaders have already proposed the name of Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus as the interim government’s chief adviser.

Yunus, 84, and his Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace prize for work to lift millions out of poverty by granting tiny loans of under $100 to the rural poor of Bangladesh but he was indicted by a court in June on charges of embezzlement that he denied.

Known as the “banker to the poor” flirted briefly with a political career, attempting to form his party in 2007. But his ambitions were widely viewed as having sparked the ire of Hasina, who accused him of “sucking blood from the poor”.

In 2011, Hasina’s government removed him as head of Grameen Bank, saying that at 73, he had stayed past the legal retirement age of 60. Thousands of Bangladeshis formed a human chain to protest his sacking.

In January this year, Yunus was sentenced to six months in prison for violations of labor law. He and 13 others were also indicted by a Bangladesh court in June on charges of embezzlement of 252.2 million taka ($2 million) from the workers’ welfare fund of a telecoms company he founded.

Although he was not jailed in either case, Yunus faces more than 100 other cases on graft and other charges. The Nobel laureate denies any involvement and said, during an interview with Reuters, the accusations were “very flimsy, made-up stories”.

Yunus is currently in Paris undergoing a minor medical procedure, his spokesperson said, adding he has agreed to the request of students who led the campaign against Hasina to be the chief adviser of the interim government.

Digital Desk