Bangladesh's newly installed interim government was to meet for the first time yesterday, officials said, as it resumes efforts to stage free and fair elections after previous attempts ended in a state of emergency.
New interim government chief Fakhruddin Ahmed was to hold his first Cabinet meeting later in the day, following unrest that has left at least 35 people dead.
He replaced embattled president Iajuddin Ahmed, who stepped aside last week after canceling planned elections.
Five members of the new advisory council -- effectively the Cabinet -- were sworn in late on Saturday in a ceremony at Dhaka's presidential palace. They are a newspaper owner, two leading businesspeople, a former chairman of the Security Exchange Commission and a former anti-corruption commission official.
The remaining members of the non-party 10-member council were due to be appointed over the next few days. They face the difficult task of winning the confidence of feuding political parties.
The country has been gripped for months by a bitter political impasse over opposition allegations that the outgoing Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) tried to rig elections scheduled for Jan. 22.
The BNP's Ahmed appointed himself as interim government chief after his party and the main opposition Awami League failed to agree on a compromise candidate amid escalating violence.
But his tenure as head of the non-party body responsible for organizing elections was dogged by opposition accusations that he was biased against them.
He imposed the state of emergency on Thursday before stepping down as head of the temporary administration. He continues, however, as the country's figurehead president.
The original caretaker government, which took power in late October at the end of the BNP's five-year mandate, was also forced to resign.
The independent Daily Star newspaper described the country's new temporary leader as a man of "personal integrity" with an illustrious career behind him at the World Bank and as head of Bangladesh's central bank.
It said his appointment should generate the confidence needed to stage the elections.
The business community, meanwhile, welcomed the state of emergency as a possible end to the disruption that has repeatedly brought the impoverished nation to a standstill.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS