Awami League banned, excluded from Bangladesh’s upcoming elections
The Election Commission has suspended the registration of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's party over allegations of crimes against humanity after her government cracked down on student protests last summer. The current head of government, Muhammad Yunus, has delayed the vote, while Jamaat-e-Islami and Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh National Party are putting pressure for an early poll.
Dhaka (AsiaNews/Agencies) – The Bangladesh Election Commission (BEC) yesterday suspended the registration of the Awami League (AL), the party of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, effectively preventing it from participating in the next parliamentary elections.
The decision comes after the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus banned all the of the party’s activities pending trials for crimes against humanity.
Party leaders are accused in connection with the violent crackdown of student protests that broke out in July last year, which led to Hasina's resignation and flight abroad.
The BEC banned the party from conducting any political activity, including publishing, media appearances, online and social media campaigns, marches, rallies and conferences.
In October 2024, the government banned the activities of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the AL’s youth wing, blamed for several outbreaks of violence.
Muhammad Yunus has not yet announced the date for the next elections, saying they could be held between the end of this year and the start of next.
While the newly formed National Citizens' Party – which includes several students who led the anti-Hasina protest movement – has called for elections to be held only after a series of reforms, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), for years the main opposition force, wants an early vote, hoping to capitalise on the current situation and return to power after years in the political wilderness.
BNP leader Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister, returned home last week, but other BNP members are still in prison or in exile.
Unlike the National Citizens' Party and the Jamaat-e-Islami (the latter opposed the AL as well as the country-s independence in 1971), BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has not called for Hasina's party to be banned. He stressed, however, that anyone responsible for the violence against the population had to be brought to justice.
Once announced, the BNP welcomed the ban on the Awami League.
Bangladesh's political history has long been marked by fierce battles, but according to some, the banning of Hasina's party now risks creating an important ideological void that might favour Islamist parties, in particular Jamaat-e-Islami.
Founded in British India, the party is present in various countries. In Bangladesh, it has been repeatedly banned by various governments and military regimes that have ruled the country.
The last ban was imposed in July last year during the anti-government protests that led to Hasina’s fall. Yunus' government later lifted the ban, saying there was insufficient evidence to prevent the party from participating in political life.
Despite estimating that 1,400 people were killed by the repression of the Hasina government during the last wave of protests, the United Nations urged Bangladeshi authorities in February not to ban any political party to avoid further weakening the country’s democracy.
It is apparent that the decision by Yunus and the CIC is the result of the pressure exerted by the Jamaat-e-Islami and the National Citizens' Party.
A Nobel Peace Prize winner known as the "banker to the poor" for promoting loans even to the poorest sections of the population through microcredit activities, Yunus has set up several commissions that have proposed a series of reforms to be implemented in the coming years.
For the BNP, which is gradually moving away from Yunus and the students’ party, this is taking too long; instead, it is calling for elections to be held in the coming months.
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12/04/2007
