Plan to oust Hasina was prepared earlier, Yunus’s former aide claims

CNN Central News & Networks / ITDC India ePress / ITDC News /Agencies/ Bhopal: Plan to oust Hasina was prepared earlier, Yunus’s former aide claims

Dhaka. Talks on the political arrangement after a change of power in Bangladesh had begun even before the fall of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s government. This claim has been made by Shafiqul Alam, former press secretary to Muhammad Yunus, the former chief adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government. His disclosure has triggered fresh discussion on the background and sequence of events behind the power change in August 2024.

A journalist brought student leaders and Yunus into contact. Shafiqul Alam said in a social media post on October 28 that during July-August 2024, as the movement against the Hasina government intensified, student leaders wanted to contact Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. For this, they took the help of a trusted intermediary. According to Alam, Kadruddin Shishir, then editor of the Dhaka fact-check team of the French news agency AFP, established contact between the student leaders and Yunus.

Alam claimed that Shishir conveyed to Yunus the student leaders’ proposal that he lead the interim government and also facilitated the initial talks between the two sides. This contact took place about two days before Hasina left the country. Describing the entire process as highly confidential, he said only a few selected people knew about it.

Hasina left the country on August 5. In Bangladesh, the student movement that began in July 2024 against reservations in government jobs gradually turned into a wider anti-government protest. Amid violence and political pressure, Sheikh Hasina left the country on August 5, 2024. The next day, student leaders publicly proposed Muhammad Yunus’s name as head of the interim government. On August 8, Yunus assumed charge as the chief adviser of the interim government.

The disclosure has raised new questions. Alam’s statement indicates that talks on a possible successor and leadership of the new government were under way even before Hasina was removed from power. However, the information that contact was established with Yunus alone does not prove that the entire student movement or the process of bringing down the government was run by any one group under a pre-decided plan. Several questions remain unanswered about the actual nature of the talks and the role of all those involved.

Shafiqul Alam’s statement is important for understanding the sequence of events in Bangladesh’s change of power, but it should be viewed as his claim.

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