Bangladesh’s Awami Party, which is poised to form a new government, named Zillur Rahman as the country’s next president, media reports said yesterday quoting party chief Sheikh Hasina Wazed.
“The party will nominate its presidium member Zillur Rahman as head of the state,” Hasina said after her party’s newly elected legislators took the oath of office, Ittefaq newspaper reported.
The 79-year old Zillur was elected deputy leader of the House by the party, to replace Iajuddin Ahmed as president after the new parliament goes into session.
“We want to recognize his contributions in all democratic movement in Bangladesh,” said Hasina, who is expected become prime minister this week.
Rahman played a vital role in keeping the party united during the absence of party chief Hasina during the two years of army-backed government, when she was in exile and later arrested by the junta.
The Awami League party won a landslide majority in parliamentary elections on Dec. 29, to return her to the prime minister’s post that she held from 1996 until 2001.
The new government is expected to sworn in tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s main opposition party, which was routed in the recent general elections, said it would boycott yesterday’s scheduled swearing-in of its members of the parliament.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) spokesman Rizvi Ahmed said the party’s 29 newly elected members of parliament would not attend the event, but declined to explain the decision.
Quddus Khan, a senior official at the national parliament, said the boycott would not affect the formation of the incoming government as Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party won a majority in last Monday’s elections.
The BNP’s refusal came a day after Bangladesh’s prime minister-elect Sheikh Hasina Wajed was sworn in along with all the Awami League MPs.
The BNP has conceded defeat in the elections but maintained that the polls, in which the Awami League won 230 out of a possible 300 seats, were rigged.
Held under tight security, the country’s first vote since 2001 saw turnout of 87 percent and little of the unrest that forced the last planned vote to be cancelled and an army-backed administration take control for two years.
Independent observers, including a team from the EU, have declared the election was free and fair.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS