DHAKA: Bangladesh’s protest leaders said they expect members of an interim government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, to be finalised on Wednesday after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina quit and fled to India following a violent crackdown on a student-led uprising.
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Bangladesh’s president appointed Yunus as the head of the interim government late on Tuesday, meeting a key demand of students, and said the remaining members need to be finalised soon to overcome the current crisis, according to a statement from his office.
The interim government will fill a power vacuum left after Bangladesh’s army chief announced Hasina’s resignation in a televised address on Monday that followed weeks of deadly violence that ripped through the country, killing about 300 people and injuring thousands.
Her resignation triggered jubilation across the country and crowds stormed into her official residence unopposed after she fled, ending a 15-year second stint in power in the country of 170 million that has suffered economic distress in recent years.
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Normalcy slowly began returning to the country after Monday’s chaos but fresh protests broke out in a Dhaka neighbourhood on Wednesday when hundreds of officials from the central bank forced four of its deputy governors to resign over alleged corruption, Bangladesh Bank sources said.
The bank did not immediately comment.
Giant neighbour India, which has strong cultural and business ties with Bangladesh, evacuated all non-essential staff and their families from its embassy and four consulates in the country, two Indian government sources said.
Most schools and university campuses in Dhaka and other cities that shut in mid-July due to the protests, reopened while people took buses and other transport to offices and banks. The country’s mainstay garments factories that had been shut for days began opening on Wednesday.
The interim government is expected to hold elections soon after taking charge, while a spokesperson for Yunus said he would arrive in Dhaka on Thursday after a medical procedure in Paris.
Nahid Islam, one of the main leaders of the student movement, told reporters after President Mohammed Shahabuddin’s announcement that students have recommended 10-15 members for the interim government in an initial list they shared with the president.
Islam said he expects interim government members to be finalised in 24 hours starting from late Tuesday evening.
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The students’ recommendations for the government include civil society members and also student representatives, Islam said.
Shahabuddin has also recommended that a veteran of Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war from Pakistan should be nominated to the interim government.
The movement that toppled Hasina rose out of demonstrations against public sector job quotas for families of veterans of the war, seen by critics as a means to reserve jobs for allies of the ruling party.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry, commenting for the first time since protests broke out, said on Wednesday that “the government and people of Pakistan stand in solidarity with the people of Bangladesh, sincerely hoping for a peaceful and swift return to normalcy.”
Hasina landed in New Delhi on Monday and is staying at a safe house on the outskirts of the capital.
Indian media reports have said that she plans to travel onwards to Britain, but the British Home Office has not commented.
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