Competing Demands Weigh Muhammad Yunus Down In Dhaka

After 15 years of Sheikh Hasina’s highhanded rule, Bangladeshis are feeling free to make demands, some of them quite outrageous, and press for immediate action.

The Interim Government headed by Dr.Muhammad Yunus is in sixes and sevens trying to meet the multifarious and competing demands from various interest groups. The hurriedly put together government is handicapped by the fact that its de-facto cabinet, called the Advisory Council, has no political structure to lean on.

Members of the council have no experience of working together as a cohesive unit in any other structure before. The advisors are no doubt distinguished, but they come from diverse backgrounds with different ideological orientations. They had not worked together with a single “political” entity in a disciplined way as in a political party.

Therefore, they tend to pursue different and sometimes contrary agendas, and issue contradictory statements.

The Advisory Council is facing a bewildering array of demands. Students who spearheaded the July-August movement which overthrew Sheikh Hasina, are now agitating for the resignation or removal of Bangladesh President Mohammad Shahabuddin because he had said in a newspaper interview, that there is no official document to say that Sheikh Hasina had resigned. She had fled to India without handing in a letter of resignation!

This set off a political storm. In the student agitators’ view, the President was hinting that the Interim Government was illegal in the absence of Hasina’s resignation letter. The students recalled that Shahabuddin owed his job to Sheikh Hasina and perhaps wanted her back. Angry students tried to storm into this President’s palace across barricades demanding his resignation.

This incident sparked off a debate with some demanding the President’s resignation and others like the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) opposing any hasty action which could lead to a constitutional crisis.

If the President were to resign, the question of a successor would have to be decided. That is a knotty problem as the body that should elect a President, the country’s parliament, had been dissolved!

The “Student movement against discrimination” and the Jatiya Nagorik Committee urged the Interim Government to form an all-party council, which would advise it on who should be the successor to Shahabuddin if he were to leave. "Political parties should together decide who will be the President,” said Nasiruddin Patwari, convener of the Jatiya Nagorik Committee. Patwari added that the students’ main concern was that the person assuming the post of President should not have a fascist agenda.

Even before the shattered law and order machinery was restored, the Interim Government was ordering the arrest of scores of people who were part of the earlier regime in some way on charges of corruption or high-handedness.

After the Interim Government banned the Chhatra League, the student wing of Hasina’s party, the Awami League, a group of people filed writ petitions in the High Court seeking an order to ban the Awami League and 10 other parties.

The parties whose ban was sought were: Bangladesh Awami League, Jatiya Party (of Gen. H.M.Ershad), Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal, Bikalpadhara Bangladesh, Tarikat Federation, Communist Party of Bangladesh, Liberal Democratic Party, Jatiya Party (Manju faction), Ganatantri Dal, Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist–Leninist Baruna group) and the Socialist Party of Bangladesh.

The petitions were subsequently withdrawn and no reasons were given. Yunus told Financial Times that a “Fascist” party like the Awami League has no place in Bangladesh, but he added that whether it should be allowed to participate in politics in Bangladesh or not would be decided by other political parties in the country.

Another petition sought the nullification of the 10th, 11th, and 12th parliamentary elections on the ground that these had been rigged by the then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

The Jatiya Nagorik Committee also demanded cancellation of the result of these elections, and proposed that all political parties except the Awami League and its allies should come together to form an all-party council.

There are petitions in the Court to nullify the 15 th. Amendment of the constitution which had done away the system of conducting parliamentary elections with a county put under a Caretaker Government. The BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir joined the petition.

On 19 August, the High Court had addressed the preliminary hearing of the writ filed by five eminent individuals, including Badiul Alam Majumdar and representatives from Sushashoner Jonno Nagorik.

Meanwhile, high school students who had taken only a few of the papers in the final exam because of the political turmoil in June, July and August, demanded that they should be declared as having passed in all papers including the ones they could not sit for. Protesting school students blocked roads in Dhaka.

University students held demonstrations seeking the de-linking of seven degree colleges from Dhaka University. They demanded that each of these seven colleges should be made a full-fledged university.

On September 30, a garment worker in Ashulia, near Dhaka, was shot dead and at least 20 others were injured in a violent clash between protesting workers. Several factories were closed as a result.

The unrest erupted after hundreds of garment workers blocked a major highway, demanding higher wages and improved working conditions. Agitated workers hurled bricks at police vehicles, injuring police officers.

"We are calling for enhanced safety measures, as the factories remain vulnerable due to the unrest," said Abdullah Hil Rakib, senior Vice President of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association told Reuters.

The ‘Sanatan Jagaran Manch’ a Hindu organization, organised a massive rally on 26th October in Chittagong, demanding protection for the minority Hindus, Christians and Buddhists. A meeting was held at the historic Lal Dighi Ground, where minority Hindus presented eight major demands. The group declared that their protest would continue until the Bangladeshi Government addresses these demands.

Demands raised by Hindus were as follows: Establish a tribunal to prosecute individuals involved in crimes against the minorities; Compensate victims and provide for their rehabilitation; A Minority Protection Act should be enacted immediately; A Ministry of Minority Affairs should be formed; Construction of places of worship for minorities in every educational institution and allotment of prayer rooms in every hostel; Hindu Welfare Trusts should be upgraded to Hindu Foundations; Buddhist and Christian welfare trustees should be elevated to be foundations; The ‘Property Recovery and Preservation Act and Transfer of Entrusted Property Act’ should be properly implemented; The Board of Sanskrit and Pali Education should be modernised and a five-day vacation should be given for the autumn Durga Puja.

Responding to the demands, the Interim Government Advisor for Environment Syeda Rizwana Hasan announced a two-day holiday for Durga Puja for the first time.

This rally was the largest protest by Hindus since Sheikh Hasina stepped down on August 5. While the Interim Government has promised to protect minority rights, incidents of looting, physical assault, and destruction of minority properties have continued to rise, the Sanatana Mancha said.

It further said that the “Hindus in Bangladesh have realised that they must unite and make efforts for their own protection, as no external support will come from India or other countries.”

Addressing the rally, the head of the Pundarik Dham Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari warned: "If any attempt is made to uproot the Sanatanis (orthodox Hindus), from Bangladesh, the consequences will be severe.””

"The more the oppression of the Sanatana community, the more united we will become. After holding rallies at the division and district levels to press for our demands, we will proceed with a long march towards Dhaka," Brahmachari added.

Articulating the demand for a new constitution for Bangladesh, philosopher and poet, Farhad Mazhar told The Daily Star: “The mass movement of 2024 is centred around state-building based on popular sovereignty. Its core aim is to dismantle the existing fascist state and the structures of authoritarian and fascistic power by organizing the people as the central political force. This movement seeks to launch a constitutive process to draft a new constitution based on the will of the people.”