Bangladesh President Mohammed Shahabuddin dissolves parliament in line with student leaders’ deadline

DHAKA, August 06 (SABAH): A day after Bangladesh’s ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid resigned and fled the country due to nationwide protests, the country’s parliament has been dissolved, the President Mohammed Shahabuddin’s office confirmed in a statement.

The dissolution of the parliament comes hours after protesting student leaders set a deadline to dissolve parliament and warned a “strict programme” would be launched if their deadline is not met.

Nahid Islam, one of the key organisers of the movement against Hasina, in a video on Facebook with two other student leaders, had set a 3: 00 PM deadline for the dissolution of the parliament and had called on the “revolutionary students to be ready” if that did not happen.

The decision to dissolve the parliament was taken following meetings with the heads of defence forces, leaders of political parties, student leaders and some civil society representatives, the presidential statement said.

Bangladesh’s Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman was due to meet student leaders to discuss the formation of an interim government that is expected to hold elections soon after it takes over.

It was not immediately clear if the meeting had taken place and if the students’ deadline to dissolve parliament came after the meeting.

General Zaman, on Monday, had announced Hasina’s resignation following days of violent protests which have seen around 300 people being killed. The general also announced the formation of an interim government.

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

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 own 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 labour 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 a foreign news agency, 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.