Long-time Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Hasina had not resigned as prime minister before fleeing this week to India as anti-government protesters marched on her official residence, her son and adviser told. Hasina has been sheltering in New Delhi since Monday following an uprising that killed about 300 people, many of them students, ending her uninterrupted rule of 15 years in the country of 170 million people. “My mother never officially resigned. She didn’t get the time,” Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed told.  “She had planned to make a statement and submit her resignation. But then the protesters started marching on the prime minister’s residence. And there was no time. My mother wasn’t even packed. As far as the constitution goes, she is still the prime minister of Bangladesh.” He said though the president had dissolved parliament after consulting with military chiefs and opposition politicians, the formation of a caretaker government without the prime minister actually formally resigning “can be challenged in court”. Wazed also said Hasina’s Awami League party would contest the next election, which he said must be held within three months.

“I’m confident the Awami League will come to power. If not, we will be the opposition. Either way is fine,” he said. He said he was encouraged by a recent statement from Khaleda Zia, chief of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and a Hasina foe, that there should be no revenge or vengeance after Hasina fled. “I was very happy to hear Mrs. Khaleda Zia’s statement that let bygones be bygones,” Wazed said. “Let’s forget the past. Let us not pursue the politics of vengeance. We are going to have to work together, whether it’s a unity government or not.” He said he was “willing to work with the BNP … to have democratic elections in Bangladesh and restore democracy and to work with them to ensure that going forward, we have peaceful democracy where there will be free and fair elections”. “I believe that politics and negotiations are very important,” he said. “We can argue. We can agree to disagree. And we can always find a compromise.” Asked whether he would be the Awami League’s prime ministerial candidate, he said: “My mother was going to retire after this term anyway. If the party wants me to, maybe. I will definitely consider it.”

Credit: Independent News Pakistan