Bangladesh: Yunus’ exclusive talks with BNP leader irks two major allies

A meeting between Bangladesh Chief Adviser Mumammad Yunus with BNP acting chairman Tarique Rahman has irked two major allies of the interim government, the student-led NCP and Jamaat-e-Islami.

Yunus returned to Bangladesh on Saturday ending his four-day London tour, which featured the meeting with Rahman, the acting chief of former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

After the meeting with Rahman, BNP leader Amir Kharsu Mahmud Chowdhury and Yunus’ security adviser Khalilur Rahman held a joint briefing and hinted that elections could be held in February next year.

Both Jamaat and National Citizen Party (NCP) have termed the meeting in London on Friday between Yunus and the BNP leader as his bias towards a particular party. BNP is the arch rival of the deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League.

In a statement on Saturday, Jamaat termed the joint press briefing by representatives of both Yunus and Rahman as a “breach of political norms” since the interim government chief particularly advanced the election time deviating from the deadline he announced last week in Dhaka.

“Through this, he (Yunus) has expressed special affection for a party (BNP), which has undermined his impartiality,” the statement said, adding that instead of announcing the new deadline on the foreign soil, he should have done it after consulting other parties on his return home. The NCP, which was launched in February, on Friday night said people would not accept any election date before the implementation of the proposed July Charter, referring to last year’s violent student-led agitation that toppled Hasina’s regime. Hasina fled to India on August 5 and three days later, Yunus assumed charge as the chief of the interim government. The NCP emerged as a political offshoot of Students Against Discrimination (SAD).

The NCP said the Yunus-Rahman meeting laid more importance on the election deadline but the “people’s main demand” in the post-Hasina regime “namely justice and reform, did not receive the same importance”, adding “the NCP finds this very disappointing.”

The BNP, several other parties and the military had been mounting pressure on Yunus to conduct general elections by December. He, however, in a nationwide address last week, said the polls would be held in April next year.

Yunus previously said the polls would be held in between December 2024 or June 2025 following the reforms and justice or the trial of the deposed regime leaders were completed.

The Jamaat statement said it was “morally inappropriate” for Yunus as the head of the interim government to hold a joint press briefing with a single party and added that such actions raised doubts among people about fairness and neutrality of the upcoming election process.

The statement came after a meeting of the party’s Central Executive Council was held on Saturday morning.

The NCP, on the other hand, said it repeatedly observed that the government is giving priority to the position and demands of “only one political party” on the election issue.

“We believe that holding the National Assembly elections without a clear roadmap for the formulation of the ‘July Proclamation’, the implementation of the ‘July Charter’ and the implementation of the trial will turn the popular uprising into a mere transfer of power and will suppress the people’s desire for state building,” the NCP statement read.

Yunus’ interim government had disbanded Awami League until its leaders were exposed to punitive actions for what it claimed were their brutal actions to tame the uprising.

Most Awami leaders were arrested, some went underground or fled abroad as the interim government initiated a process to try them, including Hasina, in Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal on charges like crimes against humanity.