Explore
Settings

Settings

×

Reading Mode

Adjust the reading mode to suit your reading needs.

Font Size

Fix the font size to suit your reading preferences

Language

Select the language of your choice. NewsX reports are available in 11 global languages.
we-woman
Advertisement · Scroll to continue
  • HOME»
  • World»
  • Political Shutdown For Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League? Yunus Adviser Foresees No Election Success

Political Shutdown For Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League? Yunus Adviser Foresees No Election Success

Awami League barred from upcoming elections in Bangladesh as political turmoil continues. Adviser Mahfuz Alam calls for reforms before any election takes place.

Advertisement · Scroll to continue
Political Shutdown For Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League? Yunus Adviser Foresees No Election Success


A key adviser to Muhammad Yunus’s interim government announced on Saturday that Bangladesh’s deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League would be barred from participating in the upcoming elections.

Advertisement · Scroll to continue

Mahfuz Alam, a prominent figure in the Anti-Discrimination Movement, which led the uprising that ousted Hasina’s government and forced her into exile, stated, “The elections will be contested only by pro-Bangladesh groups.” The Awami League has been largely absent from the political scene since August 5, 2024, with many of its leaders and Hasina’s cabinet members either jailed on charges of murder and other crimes or in hiding, both domestically and abroad.

Addressing a street rally in central Chandpur district, Alam declared that only former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Jamaat-e-Islam, and other “pro-Bangladesh” groups would continue their political activities in the country. He added that these groups would establish future governance through a fair electoral process. “But Awami League’s rehabilitation will not be allowed in this country,” said Alam, who serves as a de facto minister without portfolio in Chief Adviser Yunus’s administration.

Advertisement · Scroll to continue

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

Earlier, the BNP expressed its opposition to banning any political party, visibly weighing its support for archrival Awami League’s existence in the political field. The BNP demanded elections in the quickest possible time after minimal reforms, calling it a continued process. BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir recently stated that the reform agenda undertaken by the interim government could take 10 years and that 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, the BNP warned that the interim government would lose its credibility if figures from the government formed a party while staying in power.

Local Government and Youth and Sports Adviser Asif Mahmud Sajeeb Bhuiyan, another leader of the Anti-Discrimination Movement, stated in a Facebook post on Saturday, “There will be efforts or debates about who is more advanced in doing people’s welfare.” Information Affairs adviser Nahid Islam, another student leader, mentioned that if required, the advisers of the government would resign from their posts to form the party and contest the future election.

Last month, Yunus indicated that the next general election in the country could take place by the end of 2025 or the first half of 2026. However, he noted that the timing of the election would largely depend on political consensus and the extent of the reforms that must be carried out before it.

Filed under

Awami League Bangladesh

Advertisement · Scroll to continue
Advertisement · Scroll to continue

mail logo

Subscribe to receive the day's headlines from NewsX straight in your inbox