Deposed Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came out with guns blazing against her successor Muhammad Yunus’s cancel culture in an exclusive online interview with this newspaper. Fifteen months after she was forced into exile in India following a domestic uprising, during which Hasina chose to stay mum on the alleged foreign hand, she spoke her mind on the interim government led by Yunus banning her Awami League from contesting the general election that is barely three months away. Evolving some mechanism to bar individuals under investigation for their alleged crimes could be understood. However, banning an entire mainstream party goes against the grain of fundamental rights of the electorate. Hasina pushed back against the charges of rigging elections when she was in power, conceding that some of the past elections were not fully participatory because major political parties chose to boycott them. That cycle of non-participation must now be broken, she added, making her case for lifting the ban on the Awami League to make the February election inclusive.
She addressed difficult questions head on while disputing the UN’s estimate of 1,400 deaths during the July 2024 uprising. While Hasina took what she called ‘leadership responsibility’ for the deaths, she said all actions were taken in good faith to minimise the loss of life and restore law and order. As for the toll, she claimed it included members of the security forces and of Awami League members, too, but that segregation has not been made yet by the interim government. Her combative response was read as remorseless by sections of the commentariat, but she could not be expected to self-implicate when facing trial by a tribunal for alleged crimes against humanity during her watch as PM. Hasina also brushed aside charges of syphoning out $234 billion from Bangladesh as laughable, and indulged in whataboutory, accusing Yunus of accumulating immense wealth.
In the end, Hasina came through as a leader trying to shore up the morale of her disenfranchised party. With the students who led the uprising pulling out all stops to get their nascent Jatiya Nagorik Party to capture power, the forthcoming battle of the ballot could be anything but peaceful. That is the challenge that stares at Yunus, who is said to aspire to ascend as president. How the dice rolls in February, only time can tell.