Hasina’s Awami League party does not figure in the interim government after she resigned on Monday following weeks of violence that killed about 300 people and injured thousands.
In a Facebook post, her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy said the party had not given up, however, and was ready to hold talks with opponents and the interim government.
“I had said my family will no longer be involved in politics but the way our party leaders and workers are being attacked, we cannot give up,” he said on Wednesday.
OPPOSITION APPEALS FOR CALM
Yunus, known as the “banker to the poor”, received the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding a bank that pioneered the fight against poverty through small loans to needy borrowers.
Hasina’s flight from the country she ruled for 20 of the last 30 years after winning a fourth straight term in January, triggered jubilation and violence as crowds stormed and ransacked her official residence.
She is sheltering at an air base near the Indian capital New Delhi, a development that Yunus said caused anger at India among some Bangladeshis.
The student-led movement that ousted Hasina grew out of protests against quotas in government jobs that spiralled in July, provoking a violent crackdown that drew global criticism, though the government denied using excessive force.
The protests were fuelled also by harsh economic conditions and political repression in the country, born after a war of liberation from Pakistan in 1971.
The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) boycotted two national elections after the arrest of its leaders, while the COVID-19 pandemic damaged the US$450 billion economy after years of strong growth, leading to high inflation, unemployment and shrinking reserves.
It pushed the Hasina government to seek a US$4.7 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
Hasina’s arch-rival and BNP leader Khaleda Zia, 78, called for calm and an end to violence in a video address from her hospital bed to hundreds of supporters at a rally on Wednesday after her release from house arrest.
“No destruction, revenge or vengeance,” she said as the BNP demanded elections in three months.
Source: CNA
